


A Distant Early Warning

by andloawhatsit



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 1980s, Alternate Universe - Canada, Arctic imperialism, Cold War, M/M, POV Multiple, Stucky Big Bang 2016, The DEW Line
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-08 04:10:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7742833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andloawhatsit/pseuds/andloawhatsit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the soldier is sent to investigate a decades-old crash site in the Canadian high Arctic, he finds far more than he expected — instead of retrieving salvage, he pulls the plane’s pilot, injured and amnesiac but still breathing, from the wreck. Curious about the pilot’s fragmented story and strangely hesitant to turn him over to his handler, the soldier pretends to be an officer assigned to the DEW Line and delays his check-in. But the longer he waits, the more he questions the pilot’s identity and his absent handler’s intentions both for the mission and for the American family the man already holds captive, not to mention his own piecemeal memories. He doesn’t know if it’s a test, a set-up, or a disaster, but he knows he can’t let the pilot go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Distant Early Warning

**Author's Note:**

> Once again, many (MANY) vigorous thanks to the three artists — stuckypocketguide, notallbees, and wizardmemes — who chose this story for the Stucky Big Bang 2016. stuckypocketguide's art is distributed throughout the story here, beginning with her cover — if your reading medium supports it, please do look at the details she's incorporated into her work — while you can also visit each of these artists at their Tumblrs:
> 
>  
> 
> [stuckypocketguide.tumblr.com](https://stuckypocketguide.tumblr.com)  
> [wizardmemes.tumblr.com](https://wizardmemes.tumblr.com)  
> [notallbees.tumblr.com](https://notallbees.tumblr.com)
> 
>  
> 
> Very extra-special thanks to stuckypocketguide, a dedicated and inspiring editor and project partner who also wore the beta hat for this story. Thank you for your excellent comments and ideas, wonderful enthusiasm, attention to detail and research, and of course, your art. You made this story better.
> 
> If you want to visit me to talk about the DEW Line, or about anything else, you can find me at  
> [andloawhatsit.tumblr.com](https://andloawhatsit.tumblr.com)

 

* * *

**"I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world."  
** **— from _The Song of Achilles_ by Madeline Miller**

**"Let him hew away! I cannot live without you."  
— from "The Death of Koschei the Deathless," as told by Andrew Lang**

**“There’s tremendous scientific and technical hubris — that we can do this, that we have the power to transform the environment of the North to suit our needs.”  
** **— Dr. Matthew Farish, on the construction of the DEW Line**

***

**Sam**  
**21 June 1988**  
**Aklavik, Northwest Territories**  
**1.6 degrees above the Arctic Circle**

On the longest night of the year, 12-year-old Sam Wilson snuck through his bedroom window into a night bright as day, itching for something to do. Though the Wilsons were nearly a month into their three-month stay in Aklavik, he felt out of place: there were no other Americans and certainly none that looked like them. But his mother's work as a chemist had dictated their last adventure, making it his father's turn — those were the family rules — and his father's work had brought them north, to while away the summer tinkering with old radios. Sam sighed at the thought. While local kids enjoyed the summer light— and that if they weren't already doing something better, like summer hunting, fishing, or trapping, the Wilsons had gone on only one excursion since their arrival, when someone his parents knew had flown them to Banks Island. Other than that, the parental units wanted him in town, working on his summer reading, and "in bed at a reasonable hour." 

That being especially unacceptable on the solstice, Sam had made his escape as soon as his mother herself went out, leaving his father curled up on the sofa with a science magazine. He had meant to look for other kids, but his self-made mission intrigued him more: with the Peel Channel to his back, he followed his mother from the old signal station where they were staying, through the narrow streets toward a row of government staff housing. He was proud of his stealth, peering beneath a Honda four-wheeler to watch her feet, and when she let herself in, he rounded the side of the building to peek through an open window.

Inside, a short man with a thick, grey beard sat on the sofa. Sam recognized him from his mother's lab back in DC, but couldn’t place him. Worried that his mother might sense him, he ducked. He had thought her going to a friend's place to play cards or listen to records, but had found something else altogether.

"Bohdan, it's so good to see you out of the lab," said Sam's mother.

_Bohdan, that's it_ , thought Sam. _Bohdan Yar… Yaru… Yaraschuk!_

"I hope your flight was comfortable, despite the delays today — it's so easy to get fogged out. And I'm glad Paul's assignment could see us overlap, so we could help you get settled.”

For a friend, Yaraschuk's response was icy. "My dear Mrs. Wilson, you're too kind. In fact, I hope you'll assist me with something else."

Sam smothered a giggle. Nobody called Darlene "Mrs. Wilson" or even "Dr. Wilson": her friends even called her "just-Darlene" to tease her.

Yaraschuk set a leather briefcase on the low coffee table before him, then fiddled with the catch, but when he craned his neck, Sam saw nothing but papers. "Perhaps we'll solve this right here: what can you tell me about these analyses, Mrs. Wilson? These possible formulas for the serum?"

Darlene stepped back. "I understand the nature of our work together, Bohdan, and your commitment to it, but these materials shouldn't have left DC. Director Stark had said that you were taking a position at the local school, and we're here so Paul can monitor radio signals and clear out the old station, not for me to work on the formula.”

"Ah yes, Paul," said Yaraschuk. "He's having a similar conversation with an associate of mine this very moment, and if we don't join them as I've planned, I fear something might happen to him." He laughed, a sharp bark. "Really? Myself, left to teaching in this backwater?"

"You can't be — "

"Bring these documents quietly, you told me," said Yaraschuk. "At least, you will find it difficult to prove otherwise, to prove that you didn't ask me to bring all records of Erskine's work."

"Bohdan, we're friends, we helped you defect, we — "

"I did not defect," said Yaraschuk, and though Darlene lunged forward, she was too slow. He slammed the lid, then struck her back with the heavy case.

At the window, Sam shook, his mind blank and whirling, and he stumbled from his perch to run toward the front door, toward her. Inside, Darlene spotted him and cried, "No!" and he managed only a few steps before a hand clamped around his mouth and a sickly sweet scent filled his nose.

It was too much to struggle.

He collapsed, thinking of his mother.

**The soldier**  
**22 June 1988**  
**Soviet campsite at Drift Point on the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula**  
**Northwest Territories, Canada**

When the float-plane landed, the soldier stood at Koschei's elbow until his handler ordered both him and the timid KGB attaché sent to monitor the expedition to tow the plane ashore. He worked silently, while the attaché shivered and grumbled, yelping when the cold water swamped his rubber boots, but with the help of the pilot — a stodgy, bearded man that the soldier recognized from his briefing files as the chemist Bohdan Yaraschuk, newly returned from a Western posting — and his bodyguard, the plane soon rested out of the tide's reach.

<My dear doctor> said Koschei, catching Yaraschuk in a back-slapping embrace. <How pleased I am that you've arrived at last. Ah!> He struck the chemist's arm; Yaraschuk winced. <It's these insects. Intolerable unless the wind is up.>

The soldier kept his face still, but recognized the slippery insult in his handler's words: with sugary friendliness, he derided Yaraschuk for lateness while disciplining him like a recalcitrant student. A rap on the knuckles. He was nothing if not efficient in his disregard for the Ukrainian scientist.

<Soldier> said Koschei. <Check on our American friends.>

He went as directed, though the back of his neck prickled when he caught Yaraschuk's hesitant interjection, <But you see, there has been a complication…> He flexed his metal fingers and walked faster, having no desire to be in Koschei's presence when "complications" arose.

The nature of the problem, though, was apparent when the soldier opened the plane's cargo door: on one side sat a man and woman — after a quick once-over showed them securely bound and gagged, the soldier left them to Koschei's men, indifferent to their furious glares — but on the other, a child lay unconscious. When the soldier lifted him, the adults strained their bindings with muffled exclamations, but he ignored them and carried the child back to Koschei.

His handler eyed them coolly. <It is, as you say, a complication.> He shrugged. <But perhaps he will make his parents more agreeable. Romanova can mind him, soldier. I have something else for you to do.>

The attaché mumbled something, then raised his voice, stammering words that had likely cost all his courage. <But sir, I — I must object. >

<Must you, Vasili?> Koschei watched him, cat and broken-winged bird.

Vasili shot a wide-eyed, fearful glance to the soldier, then swallowed heavily, but managed a reply. <It may be impractical to linger, particularly now that we have what we came for. Intelligence suggests that it would not be unusual for the Canadian Rangers to patrol this area, and I hadn't anticipated a child — >

<We do not have all we came for> said Koschei. Vasili looked at his feet. <And I will not come this close to the Valkyrie to slink home defeated. Signal the submarine. Tell them to hold and to anticipate our return within one to two weeks.

<Two we — > Vasili flushed and did not complete his outburst, but the incredulity in his voice had already betrayed his hesitancy.

<Stop fussing> said Koschei. He waved his hand toward the little cove where they would make camp. <The Canadians are technologically incompetent: they'd have to trip over us to find us.>

The soldier scanned the sheltered bay. It was well-shielded from wind and tide, as well as prying eyes, but the same features that protected it — a low slope to higher ground, beached rocks and rough shrubbery — made it an attractive target for someone coming over the peninsula, no matter how improbable that was, and he didn't like it. The child stirred in the his arms; if the boy had been drugged, he was waking.

<As I said, Romanova can mind the child while the others prepare the site.> Koschei turned on his heel. <Yaraschuk with me, please. I'm going to speak to the Americans. Soldier, you as well.>

**Sam  
** **22 June 1988**  
**Soviet campsite at Drift Point on the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula**  
**Northwest Territories, Canada**

When Sam opened his eyes, he found the inside peak of a canvas tent and the pilled green flannel of an army sleeping bag. He had no idea where he was, but when his head stopped spinning, his eyes focused on a girl sitting cross-legged a foot or two away from him. She had short red hair and skin as pale as if she'd never seen the sun in her life, and she wore a long-sleeved button-up shirt with a red scarf around her neck. She bunched the ends of her sleeves in her hands.

"You're awake," she said.

"No d'uh, Captain Obvious," said Sam, scared but unwilling to show it, no matter how his heartbeat roared in his ears. In a rush he recalled the house in Aklavik, his mother, Yaraschuk, and that sickly sweet smell, like mulched flowers. He wondered if it had been chloroform; that was what people used — didn't they? His voice wobbled when he said, "Where are my parents?" He gulped. "Tell me where they are."

"You're with me," said the girl. "Your mother and father are with Koschei and we are far, far, far up north."

"Koschei? Where's that?"

"Not where, who," she said. "My sisters told me Koschei can see in the dark and hear through walls, and that he'll never die." She shrugged. "But if that were true, I wouldn't tell you where he could hear, would I?"

"I don't know what you'd do. I don't know you." He was trying to distract her while he reviewed the lessons his parents had drilled into him. They were only scientists, but their lab had dozens of dumb security rules. _Nothing will happen, but if something happens: be polite, answer their questions, don't be afraid. Someone will come for you._ "What's your name?" The girl picked absently at her thumbnail. Perhaps she was also a prisoner. "My name's Sam Wilson," he said. "I'm from New York, but we live in DC." He held out his hand, but she didn't take it.

"Natalia Romanova," she said, after a long pause. She named no home.

"I'll protect you," said Sam, trying to make himself believe it. "And my parents will rescue us."

“Oh, a hero!" She snorted. "Are all Americans like you?"

**The soldier**  
**24 June 1988**  
**Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula  
Northwest Territories, Canada**

Koschei's coordinates were easy enough to locate, but the further inland the soldier travelled, over green and brown meadows heavy with feathery white blossoms and low shrubbery skirting sodden moss-beds, the more mosquitos swarmed him. Their droning filled his ears, thick bodies in his nose and mouth, enough to incapacitate a regular man. Being no regular man, their bites were little more than fleeting irritation, rising and healing quickly, but he still wore a hooded mosquito jacket to deaden their noise. Koschei had outfitted him with the armband and decades-old Lee Enfield rifle of a Canadian Ranger, after all, and to eschew the other trappings of his cover seemed impractical.  **_(He had once met a bunch of Canadians in France, singing and laughing, those same guns, and — )_ ** The strange thought shot through him like lightning. Standing over the aeronautical wreckage found in higher, dryer ground than that he'd come over, he surveyed the plane, half-buried and overgrown with lichen and flowers, and shook his head briskly to scatter the notion with the insects.

Limited by having nothing more than he could carry, it took hours to dig the plane partially from the frozen ground, much of it driven below the easily dislodged soil and into the permafrost, but since the crash had exposed much of that to melt, the work was taxing but not impossible. Water damage too was minimal, for runoff had drained away. Still, another hour passed before he located the transmitter that Koschei had commanded he scavenge, a device rumoured to generate a field that blocked all known methods of detection and to be yet unmatched by even the most current Soviet and American technology. As the soldier had sat immobilized with waking up, the ice fog retreating from his mind, Koschei had described the blocker with glee, equally rapturous about the companion piece he had found in the Swiss Alps, the only technology capable of locating the blocker in the first place. _Never mind their DEW Line,_ he had said. _With this, they'd never see us coming._

Alone on the peninsula, sweating and breathing hard, his right hand torn-blistered and bloody, the soldier sat back on his heels and shucked his heavy jacket. He was confident that he was the first to disturb the plane's rest and sat with the blocker squat in the disturbed earth beside him, secure in its hard black casing. It was about the size of his fist; such a little thing. It had sparked when he pulled it from the plane, then fizzled out. He blinked, twice. Tilted his head to the left.

A hand — no, an arm — no, a body in the wreck…

He was without disgust: he had seen enough death, caused enough, and besides, Koschei had demanded tissue samples from any body recovered. He simply hadn't expected one, at least not in such good condition, and he was curious: the flesh was pink and smooth, not grey with death or frost. His right hand found it warm, while his left felt the circulation of blood. He rolled his stiff shoulders and dug further, ignoring his injured hand to shift ice, gravel, and cold soil and clear the plane's cockpit, then strained to pull the pilot to the surface. The man held a compass and his pulse was slow but steady; the soldier's torn palm had smeared blood on his clothes. When he began to shiver — violently, though he did not wake — the soldier made a decision: the plane's wing had broken and after ascertaining that the pilot's bones had not followed suit, he lashed the man to it, then dragged him to his own nearby camp, pitched in the dry lee of a hydrolaccolith formation. Koschei would want this impossible man alive, he told himself, his muscles burning as he towed the wing, but while he knew that his handler's desires were not the only reason he had pulled the man from the frozen earth, any other motivation remained obscure and uncomfortable to contemplate, like worrying a spoiled tooth.

_The man was blond and sweat-damp, his face purpled with bruising, and his clothing had once been printed with the colours of the American flag._

* * *

The man was blond and sweat-damp, his face purpled with bruising, and his clothing had once been printed with the colours of the American flag. The soldier rubbed at the bloodstain on the man's shoulder, then set his broken nose before he regained consciousness, binding his eyes with bandages from his own kit. When the man stirred and pulled at his wrappings, the soldier said gently, building his alias, "Don't, please. Your eyes are damaged." As far as the soldier could tell they were they weren't, beyond the bruising, but he meant to put the man, already disoriented, at further disadvantage. The man started and blurted something in English, but his voice was hoarse and his words difficult to discern as he twisted weakly, limbs still heavy with disuse and swollen injury. The soldier pressed the man's hands to his chest and spun his legend, playing up a Canadian accent. "Stop, your eyes, you're safe. Nothing to worry about, I promise."

But what had brought the man to the peninsula? While it was not unusual for Americans to stray this far north, both overtly and covertly, their intentions varied. Some thirty years before, they had build the Distant Early Warning Line across the United States and Canada and into Greenland, though these stations were now outmoded and decaying — Koschei had mocked them for it — but they also made an open secret of roaming the Arctic in blatant disregard for Canadian borders. The voyage of the Polar Sea had caused great uproar a few years before. How Koschei had laughed, describing it. The Canadians, he had explained — holding forth at length as he did each time he brought the soldier, his captive audience, out of cryo-stasis — were better off to hold their noses and avoid drawing attention to their inability to keep either Soviet or American submarines from their waters. Even SHIELD, perpetual thorn in Koschei's side, meddled in the Arctic as a matter of course.

Thoughts of Koschei set the soldier's skin prickling. His handler had ordered samples, not survivors, and if he had compromised his mission… He silenced this line of inquiry with cool logic: he had broken no rules. He had been instructed to investigate particular coordinates and to return to his handler within seven days; as it was barely midnight on the third day, four remained in which he might discharge his duties with honour. He had disobeyed no orders; there would be nothing to confess.

"What's wrong with my eyes?" The man jerked upright, puppet-like. "Where's Peggy?"

The soldier kept the man's clammy hands against his chest. "Hang on," he said, soothing. "You're going to have to get into dry clothes."

"Save a dance," said the man, and slumped again.

The soldier nodded, despite knowing that the man could not see him. Smudges of dried blood marked the man's forehead and as he pushed back his own hair, the thought of how it might feel to brush back the man’s, or to sponge his face, rippled through him. Again, that unpleasant prickling. To care for the man would be a good way to gain his trust and knowledge, but that was all. He had four days before the end, perhaps more if Koschei occupied himself with the Americans, and if he brought back good information, perhaps he would be given another mission instead of returned to cryo-stasis. Perhaps he could be sent somewhere with people. The man settled and though he did not sink back into unconsciousness, he was largely incoherent while the soldier briskly cleaned his face, bullied him into clean clothes — the soldier’s own spares — and checked his extremities for frostbite. There was none, a bizarre stroke of fortune, and although his boots were worn, with no alternative they would have to serve. With this work complete, the soldier cleaned grit and blood from his own palm, then bandaged it and sat the rest of the night, inventorying his supplies in a careful, prayerful litany: rations, socks, chlorine tablets, maps, ammunition, a small shovel, a lightweight camp stove and fuel, fire-starters and water-proof matches, a first aid kit, a set of tin dishes, cigarettes, and a bed roll and ground sheet. Enough to get by.

With his knives and compass secure in his pockets, he dozed intermittently. Only enough to get by.

*

The man awoke some hours later — about nine o'clock in the morning the soldier figured, though he’d had to guess since the sun was up most of the day.  **_(Long go, he had counted seconds, minutes, hours, scratched days into the — )_ ** He shuddered, but having shored up his legend during his night-watch, placed his bandaged hand gently on the man's ankle. "Good morning. How's your head?"

"Splitting," said the man. "There was something I had to do. Where am I?"

"Canada," said the soldier. "I'm a liaison officer with the Canadian Rangers. I was on my way to BAR-D, er, the station that is, when I found your plane — and you. Figured you weren't a Russkie, so it'd be safe to bail you out." He smiled at his private joke. "Don't take your bandages off, eh? Please and thank you, and I'll think we'll save them. Your eyes, I mean, if you don't pick at it. " It was easy to tell the man to take care of himself; it seemed… habitual. The soldier was well-trained, after all; he became his assignment. Even Koschei, impossible to please, said so. "But you'll have to tell me," he said, "what an American's doing up here."

“Canada?” The man squirmed, confused. "I wasn't in Canada, I was in Switzerland."

Switzerland… Koschei had found the blocker's companion piece in Switzerland. With some difficulty, the soldier maintained his cheerful tone. "If you started in Switzerland, boy, did you go off-course."  **_(He had lain at the bottom of an alpine ravine, looking at his left arm from a terrible angle, and — )_ ** "Pulled you out of what's left of your plane a little way's away, but never mind that now. Here we are, far from anything you'd recognize, but I found you, so everything's going to be fine. What's your name?"

"I'm not sure — I can't, I — " The man's voice had risen and he tried to sit up, agitated.

The soldier patted his ankle again. "You had a shock is all. It'll come back."

"Grant, " said the man, like he could compel certainty with nothing but desire. "My name is Grant."

"Heya, Grant," said the soldier. He thought of young Romanova, whispering stories to the other children — tales passed down from Yulia, though the little Widows didn’t know it. The woman was little more than a legend to them. “I’m… Ivan."

**Natalia  
** **24 June 1988**  
**Soviet Campsite at Drift Point on the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula**  
**Northwest Territories, Canada**

Natalia left the boy in a small tent to shake Yaraschuk's sedative. The men that had come ashore with them guarded the adults in another, with the chemists' own bodyguard annexed to relieve them as needed. Koschei's strategy was plain enough — control the parents with the threat of harm to their child — but she was pleased to have responsibility over the boy and sought Vasili to requisition food and water.

When she found him, the young man stood barefoot, muttering curses as he lay his wet socks in the sun. At Natalia's request, though, he paused to distribute her ration, plus one for the boy. <The solder's not checked in, has he?>

<He only left two days ago, sir> said Natalia.

Vasili frowned and poked at his socks. He stood slightly hunched, the way tall people did when they were shy of it and Natalia figured she could manage him easily. <We're in for it now> he said. <One thing the same between us and the West, Romanova: commanders doing what they will and the devil take good sense.> He clicked his tongue.

She fidgeted with her scarf, uncomfortable. Though Vasili outranked her, his disrespect for their commanding officer obliged her to report him.

<Don't mind me, Romanova> he said, having sensed her discomfort. He sought to charm her, smiling weakly. <What's a joke between comrades-in-arms?>

She thanked him for the rations, but returned to the boy before Vasili said something she could not permit herself to ignore.

**The soldier  
** **25 June 1988**  
**Temporary campsite on the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula  
Northwest Territories, Canada**

Grant was calmer after a night of real sleep, shivering stilled and body free of the frozen hibernation it had generated to survive. While his memories had not returned, he was confident of three things: first, his name; second, his profession ("a fellow soldier" was his phrase, for the soldier could not recall any fellows: both the others like him and the little Widows shared their own camaraderie, while he stood apart); and third, that he had carried some great obligation. These certainties, slight as they were, centred him, and as the sun travelled the sky, he managed his own stumbling circuit of their camp, balanced by his hold on the soldier's elbow as he navigated the heath, steering clear of the fire-pit and the re-bundled bed roll.

"That body doesn't know when to quit, eh?" The soldier hid his wonder behind his false identity, but the man's fortitude stunned him still: by midday, Grant could walk alone, tentatively and hands-out, eyes still bandaged, but on his own steam nonetheless. The soldier had never met a man with capabilities so close to his own.

"I've got to move," said Grant, cracking his knuckles. "If I don't, I get jumpy." He shook out his arm. "I can't stay still."

Such irrepressible energy required a caloric intake on par with the soldier's own, to the point that the soldier assessed his supply and put them on 75:25 rations. He ate mindlessly, used to it, thinking he would not amend to half-rations until Grant's strength was up and that he might supplement their diet, if needed, with netted whitefish or with hares and muskrat trapped in wire snares. He was lost in thought when Grant set their tin plate down with a clatter. He realized his companion had been speaking.”Sorry, what's that?"

Grant turned toward the soldier's voice. "Tell me again where we are?"

"The Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula," said the soldier. "Near the Arctic coast."

Grant laughed. "That means nothing to me, pal. What does it look like? Where's the nearest town?" He coughed, then cleared his throat. "I guess what I mean is, is someone going to rescue us or are we, you know… Delaying the inevitable?"

The soldier imagined Koschei's pleasure at gaining both the blocker and this new, mysterious prize, a vision of his handler's smug and skeletal grin filling his mind. "Don't worry, pal," he said, imitating Grant while he spun his lies. "Like I said, I was on my was to BAR-D, the station at Atkinson Point. We can call for back-up from there. The nearest little town's about 80 klicks west by water from the station. Just have to get there." If he thought about it, his words were nearly truth.

"What's a klick?"

The soldier was confused; he had thought it an American word for a metric measurement. "A kilometre," he said. "Eighty's about 50 miles."

"Jeez, why are you out in the middle of nowhere?" Grant winced. "Not that I'm not grateful and all."

"It's somewhere to somebody," said the soldier. "Most Rangers aren't white, you know." He had seen various signs of human passage on his way from the shore to the crash-site and was put off by Grant's strange ignorance, both of the stations and of the West's military presence in the region. Something was not right. _Klicks._ American soldiers had used the word at least since the Vietnam War… "Besides, that's what Rangers do. Trawl around, check the DEW Line, keep an eye out for the Russians." He imbued the last word with the enmity he felt for Koschei, thrilling at the minuscule rebellion even as he flushed with shame and fear. Unlike the little Widows, who had in their imaginations granted Koschei near-mythical powers, he knew Koschei was only a man, yet still the thought of his handler made him flinch.

Grant twitched his nose, quizzical, and fumbled for the cup of water; the soldier placed it in his hand. "Right, pardon my ignorance, but what's this DEW Line? And what's Canada got against the Russians?"

"Distant Early Warning Line," said the soldier, and with some derision added, "And I don't know, a little thing called mutually assured destruction?" But his flippancy dissolved and he sagged with weariness in the face of all the world's violent posturing. When they had come ashore from their submarine in a motorized inflatable, Koschei had gestured toward him and said with biting sarcasm, <Look at that profile, Romanova. Isn't it a modern weapon for a modern world?>

"Mutually assured what?" Grant's frown deepened. "But we're allies with Russia. Didn't they get the Nazis out of Stalingrad? Why would they — "

"Buddy, we haven't been allies with Russia since the end of the Second World War." Privately, the soldier thought, _doesn't matter, there's always another._

"The end — " Grant aborted his sentence and walked away, then back. He groped for the soldier's right arm, and the soldier suppressed the impulse to throw him off. "Who won?" His fingers dug into the soldier's muscle. "What happened in the Pacific? What — "

"The Allies," said the soldier. _Not that it matters._ He thought of the wreck, overgrown with lichen; it had to have been decades old, but he hadn't thought… Grant didn't know how the war had ended, nor even American army slang, and Koschei hadn't said… He suppressed a sharp self-rebuke: of course Koschei hadn't said. And if a man could survive a day in the ice, a week, a month… Why not a year? Why not decades? "Grant, when did you crash?"

"Winter," said Grant. "November. I know that much."

"November? What year?"

Silence hung between them until with a whoosh of breath, Grant sat heavily on the ground. He swallowed. "1944."

"It's June 1988," said the soldier.

"You're lying," said Grant. Then louder, "You're Hydra and you're lying," and he threw himself forward.

With his fury and fatigue, though — not to mention his blindness — he was easy to dodge, and the soldier twisted his arm behind his back to pin him to the ground. "Listen to me," he said, through his teeth. "I'm telling the truth. You can feel the light through those bandages, right? We're in the Arctic. If it was November, it'd be dark now, not to mention we'd be frozen stiff." _It's funny,_ said Koschei's voice in his head. “I'm just a Canadian. You'll have to trust me, okay?" _It's funny when it acts like it has a sense of humour._

Grant went limp.

"If I was lying, why would I pick '88?" The soldier shoved Koschei from his thoughts, "If I wanted you to believe you survived 40 years underground, why not pick 50? Why not 70, put you in a brand new millennium?" Grant shivered, and when the soldier realized that he shuddered as he had while waking and released him, Grant curled forward.

"At least we won," he said, voice muffled. "I know that's what I wanted, what I was trying to do. The plane…" He trailed off, then sat up. "There's something… I'm different. My body is different than other people's. That must be why I survived."

The soldier's stomach twisted. Certainly no ordinary man could survive what Grant had, but Koschei had intended his Arctic incursion to rendezvous with Yaraschuk and the captive Americans, with the soldier's own mission an unexpected add-on, hence Vasili's anxiety — or so he had thought. He had not expected a living, breathing man. He thought back: Koschei was confident in his own authority and often schemed in front of him, talking of _Rogers_ and _Erskine_ , words that had seemed to settle on the soldier's skin… There on the peninsula, he was sickened at the sight of Grant's misery. In the man's company he had spoken more than he could remember ever having done, but he had never felt such empathy for a target before, even among all his terrible deeds. Koschei was right to call him inhuman, monstrous: he had not even offered Grant a true name. He had no name.  **_(He had repeated his name over and over, so he wouldn't forget — )_ ** The soldier cleared his throat. "It's more varied than you'd expect." He wanted to lead their conversation to safer ground, to lend Grant some security.

"What?" Grant wiped his cheek with the back of his hand, scratching at his bandages. His bruising had already faded substantially.

"The land around us," said the soldier, sitting next to him. "There's bush and scrub, moss, berries. Some parts are wetter than others, but everything is crisp. Clean." Koschei valued order and control above all else. "It's summer, now, so it's always light, even at midnight. It can be hard if you're not used to it. Nice for you to have those bandages on, really. The clocks seem to stop making sense. It's… People say it's beautiful." Vasili had said so, murmuring to himself in the soldier's hearing.

"'People say…'" Grant reached for the soldier and held him at the elbow. "Do you think it is? Beautiful, I mean. I — I'd like to hear what you think.”

The soldier scanned the horizon; he had never been asked such a question, but it was a direct request; he needed to answer. "Water in pools and pockets, and wide, deep lakes." He recalled his studies under Koschei, what one might eat to survive. "Fields and fields of scrubby grass, with flowers, they're like white dandelions, and berry bushes — the growing season's short, but they're not ripe yet. You can eat the yellow flowers that grow near water, if you boil them, or you could boil willow leaves and fireweed." His words had run away on him; he tried to be practical. "Sweet gale leaves keep the insects down, but that grows further south. Labrador tea, maybe." He felt that he was being tested.

"Are there — is it colourful?"

"Green and brown" he said, "with white flowers, black berries, red leaves — and it's not a colour, but… Everything is bright. And the hills — the hydrolaccolith, they call them pingos. Made of ice, covered in earth, pushing up. We're camped near one, like pimples on the ground."

Grant laughed. His breathing steadied. "Right," he said. "Thank you."

For the third time, the soldier suppressed himself, this time his impulse to take Grant's hand in his.

**Sam**  
**25 June 1988  
** **Soviet campsite at Drift Point on the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula**  
**Northwest Territories, Canada**

The mysterious Koschei, followed always by an attendant who looked like a nervous college student on a terrible job-shadow, permitted Sam to see his parents once per day. They were being held in another tent nearby, close enough that he could sometimes make out their voices but too far away to speak with. For each of the three days of their captivity so far, he was marched in, allowed a few minutes, then marched out again. Through the first night he had cried as quietly as he could manage, until he was nearly sick, and only the thought that he did not want the girl — Natalia — to find him that way had kept him from wailing outright.

When she carried two plates into his tent that evening, rehydrated camping rations from the look of it, he said, "We don't know what Koschei wants, you know."

She thrust the plate at him and said, snappish, "Isn't it obvious?"

"No," he said, through his teeth. He had been desperate for company, but would soon regret it, if she was going to be like that.

"You'd all be together again, your parents and you," she said. "If they'd only agree to help."

Sam realized that her voice held jealousy — but why? "They're going to rescue me," he said. "But you can come too. I won't leave you behind." The girl was weird, certainly, and not an American, but he wouldn't leave another captive, and certainly not one so obviously frightened by Koschei.

"Rescue me?" Natalia stressed the first word, which Sam thought strange. "Koschei and Yaraschuk have your parents." She spoke like she was teaching a kindergartener to tie their shoes. "They'll leave SHIELD to work for Koschei and you'll all come with us to Russia."

"We absolutely won't," said Sam, flabbergasted. He didn't want to admit that he didn't know what SHIELD was. His parents were scientists; that was all. "Wait, what do you mean 'us?'"

"Don't worry," said Natalia, hurriedly, mistaking his anger for fear. "Koschei won't hurt anyone he needs."

"We won't let him," said Sam, reflecting her concern back at her. "And you said 'us.' Who is 'us?'"

Natalia rolled her eyes. "He was right, at least, that Americans are stupid."

"Are not," said Sam, offended.

"You are," she said. "I'm not here with you. I'm guarding you."

Sam laughed and looked the slight girl up and down. Her red neck scarf was crooked and her clothes, rough and sturdy, were worn. _Broken in_ , he realized. Her hair poked from her cap's edges. She wasn't any older than him. "Yeah, right," he said.

"If you really think so," she said, shifting to crouch on the balls of her feet, "why don't you leave?"

"Um, because," said Sam. _Real smooth, Wilson._ "Not like there's anywhere to go." Ocean on one side, tundra on the other. Trapped.

"That's the first smart thing you've said," said Natalia. "He doesn't restrain you because you're not a problem, and he doesn't restrain your parents because he's got you."

"Americans are not stupid," said Sam, to show that he could match her tone. “And my parents won't be spies."

"Great Scott!” Natalia smacked her forehead, then eyed Sam's skeptical expression. "That's what you say, isn't it? I've seen American films." She straightened her cap, tucking away her bright hair. "Anyway, they already are — just American ones."

"Are not," said Sam, irritated to be reduced to this little kids' back-and-forth, but otherwise at a loss.

Natalia looked almost sorry for him, her eyes narrowed.

"They aren't," he said, but he no longer believed it.

She lowered her voice. "They really are okay, you know. They're not hurt. Koschei really does need them."

Sam's eyes prickled again, while a damp snuffle built in his nose. Natalia had whispered so that no one would hear; she had not been supposed to tell him that, but had anyway.

"Your parents," she said, in case he hadn't gotten it.

"Thanks," he said, and sniffed, no longer able to hold back.

**The soldier  
** **26 June 1988**  
**Temporary campsite on the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula  
** **Northwest Territories, Canada**

The soldier explained the end of the Second World War in broad strokes, finding an uncanny doubling in understanding both history as he knew it and the Western version he had also been made to learn. In the middle of his hoarse-voiced description of the Vienna districts, he realized Grant had fallen asleep and that night had turned to morning. After soothing his throat with water drawn from a cold, clear pool and disinfected with chlorine tablets, he banked their fire.

With his knees drawn up to his chest, he watched the embers and turned his mission over in his mind. Koschei had taken Natalia from the Red Room to study the soldier's fieldwork, or so he said, but the soldier knew the truth. Natalia was the most promising of her cohort — the solder had trained enough to know — and there was no need for her to cut her teeth in the background of an operation. She was there, instead, to keep him in line: he could not fail, and allow Koschei to punish him through the child, but neither could he permit any further appearance of particular attachment to the girl. Either could play into Koschei's hands. He could not concern himself with the other little Widows, or Koschei's latest captives; as it stood, there was precious little he could do even for the girl, but give her strict instructions both to maintain her exercise regime and to keep out of Koschei's way while he was gone. He chewed his lip, then lit and smoked a cigarette because he felt he ought to, his hands remembering movements his mind did not: the snap and flare of a match, a hand curved to block the wind. Commitment to his cover, he supposed.

_He chewed his lip, then lit and smoked a cigarette because he felt he ought to, his hands remembering movements his mind did not: the snap and flare of a match, a hand curved to block the wind. Commitment to his cover, he supposed._

* * *

Grant stirred in the bed roll, jarring the soldier's senses and centring his attention in the present, where it belonged. When he coughed, the soldier seemed to feel it in his own lungs, tangled with an inexplicable sense of… something. Grant's face lingered in his memory but out of reach, at the end of some deadened track that Koschei had burned and salted long before. He felt… Something. _Toska_ , longing. He could not report back yet.

**Natalia  
** **26 June 1988**  
**Soviet campsite at Drift Point on the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula**  
**Northwest Territories, Canada**

Natalia hiked to an open meadow up from the beach, a field overrun with white blossoms like shreds of pillow-stuffing, seeking both quiet and distance from Koschei. The man had the feel of death on him, all her sisters said so, but contending with Yaraschuk,the Americans, and Vasili's fretting, he wouldn't miss her — and fortunately, too. She was better than the rest of her cohort at reading the man's moods and it was clear that he was uneasy.

The morning fog clung stubbornly to the ground, but the shore breeze shifted its tendrils and the insects with them. Still, she sprayed repellent, potent and cough-inducing, behind her ears and at her elbows, knees, and ankles, then stretched and shifted into the callisthenics exercises the soldier had taught her. The ground was uneven, nothing like the cold smoothness of the training hall, but as muscle memory took over, her thoughts wandered to the boy. Sam was brave, she gave him that, and she would be sorry if Koschei ordered her to kill him. That their leader’s dealings with the Americans were not going well surprised her. He had their son, after all, and Natalia understood Americans to suffer from debilitating sentimentality at the best of times.

Her calf cramped, and she stumbled and fell, breathing hard, blinking through the clenching pain. She wished the soldier would come back. Three more days; then they could go home.

**The soldier**  
**27 June 1988**  
**Temporary campsite on the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula  
** ****Northwest Territories, Canada** **

He was due in three days. By his maps and his own estimation, and if Grant could match his speed — which he thought likely — they could near the abandoned station, BAR-D on the northeast coast, in about that time, while they might return to Koschei in less than two.  **_(He had been pushing through prickly thickets, weaving through the trees, right or left, right or left, he had been with St — )_ ** The soldier re-laced his boot. Confident Grant would follow, he had only to decide where to lead and whether to continue Grant's belief in his own blindness. The soldier himself might grow in Grant's esteem if his descriptions of their surroundings were proven authentic, while they would certainly move faster if he could see… He did not want Grant to die before such an order was explicitly given. He was certain of that.

After adjusting his jacket and gloves to hide his arm, he tapped Grant's shoulder. The man stood with his sun-pinked, bandaged face toward the horizon. His nose was healing well and quickly, his bruises all but vanished. "May I check your eyes? I'd rather you see a doctor, but since one's not forthcoming and we've got to get moving…"

"Hope for the best, I guess," said Grant. "Sounds like most of my childhood. I was always — " He stopped, realizing that a memory had spilled from his mouth. "I was always sick as a kid," he said. "Right scrawny little beggar."

"Can't imagine that," said the soldier, cocking an eyebrow that Grant couldn't see, though his tone coaxed a laugh. He loosened the rough bandages, careful not to scrape skin or pull hair and shifting to shade Grant from the sun's full summer brightness.

Grant kept his eyes shut; he turned, hiding his face, and after a moment said, shaky, little more than a gasp, "I can see." His voice held the fragile relief of a last-minute reprieve; in it, the soldier was ashamed to hear echoes of himself when Koschei delayed his return to cryo-stasis. "I'm going to turn around, okay?"

"Alright," said the soldier, prickling again with inexplicable anxiety.

When Grant looked at the soldier, he stared wide-eyed and open-mouthed for several seconds, then fell to his knees and retched. "I'm fine," he said, brusque, shrugging away the soldier's hand on his back. "Give me a minute. It's the sun."

The soldier, too, was shaken, but not for the light's sake. Those eyes, their terrible blue, had pierced him. He knew the face, but could not place it, and he knew, If nothing else, that he could not let Koschei lay his hands on Grant.

_ When Grant looked at the soldier, he stared wide-eyed and open-mouthed for several seconds, then fell to his knees and retched. "I'm fine," he said, brusque, shrugging away the soldier's hand on his back. "Give me a minute. It's the sun."  _ _ The soldier, too, was shaken, but not for the light's sake. Those eyes, their terrible blue, had pierced him. He knew the face, but could not place it, and he knew, If nothing else, that he could not let Koschei lay his hands on Grant. _

* * *

**Sam  
** **27 June 1988**  
**Soviet campsite at Drift Point on the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula**  
**Northwest Territories, Canada**

Sam started when something scratched at the outside of the tent. The noise wasn't Natalia's step — he remained insulted that his captors found him so unthreatening — but that meant it could have been anything. Like in a nightmare, he was frozen with fear. _Move_ , he told himself. _You can crawl, Wilson, come on._ Heart thudding, he crept forward. If it was a bird, he had a plan; if it wasn't, he didn't. With his hand on the tent flap, he squeezed his eyes shut and counted backwards from ten. He had to pee. When no one came, not even Natalia, he pushed the flap back.

Outside, a thin, black-headed bird pecked the canvas with its red bill, indifferent to him, preoccupied with untangling itself from the mesh of mosquito netting pinned there. Something glinted on its leg — a tiny PIT tag. "Hey buddy," Sam whispered, as his idea flowered. “It's okay.” If the bird had a radio tag… It was an arctic tern; they wintered in Antarctica, even more remote than Canada, which made it likely that the corresponding tag reader could be found in their nearby nesting grounds. If the camp was where Natalia said it was. He snapped off the end of one of his curly shoelaces, freeing the emergency locator beacon his parents insisted he carry everywhere. He had been afraid to use it, worried that his captors would pick up the signal, but need suddenly outweighed fear. He wasn't sure, though, if it would work so far off the grid. Maybe the tag reader could boost his signal… If the bird passed the scanner at all. If the biologists on the receiving end understood what they had found.

But he had to try. He grabbed the bird, holding it between his fingers — tight but not too tight — as he freed it from the mesh. Though it warbled discontentedly, Sam knew it wasn't in pain; he had bird-banded plenty with his dad. Fumbling, he tied the beacon to the bird's other foot, then gently loosened his hand. Even if it flew far away, anyone who picked up the signal would get their SOS and… He tried to remember what his father had said. If the listener could get satellite signals, he thought, they might be able to trace the signal to him and his parents.

He looked up, then, about to retreat into the tent, and saw the youngest Soviet — the one Koschei called Vasili and was forever shouting at — watching him. He froze, his fear all the worse for being made real. Vasili walked slowly toward him, but Sam couldn't move. The tern ambled in a small circle, pecking still. "Please," Sam whispered. "Take off, come on." He wanted to startle the bird into flight, but couldn't move.

Vasili neared him, crouched on one knee, and ignored the bird as it beat its wings and swept into the sky. "If they come," he said. "Remember this. What I do for you."

A rush of saliva filled Sam's mouth; the butterflies in his stomach followed the tern's lead, roiling his insides.

"I am scientist," said Vasili. "I don't want serum for soldiers, I want medicine. I want this to end. I — " He snorted, then. "I am idiot. As if your lot are any better. Get back inside."

Sam didn't need to be told twice. When his pulse settled, he lay on his back and wondered what medicine Vasili had been talking about. What had he said? Serum? Just like Yaraschuk said back in Aklavik… 

**Steve  
** **27 June 1988**  
**Temporary campsite on the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula**  
**Northwest Territories, Canada**

He knew who he was. He remembered everything: New Jersey, Dr. Erskine, the serum, Peggy, Krossberg, the train, the plane — and Bucky: at his back in every fight, smoking and coming home late, drawing a laugh out of him when he couldn't raise the strength to crawl out of bed. Bucky beaming at the Stark Expo, Bucky broken on a laboratory table, Bucky in his arms in a London hotel, Bucky blazing like a saint with a sniper rifle in his hand. Bucky falling, forever out of reach. He remembered everything. Steve Grant Rogers, prize idiot. He knew exactly where he was.

Neither heaven nor hell, but purgatory.

He had known as soon as he set eyes on Ivan, a man unrecognizable except that he seemed to wear Bucky's face, use the ghost of his voice. It couldn't be hell; he wasn't quite bad enough for hell, sins of the flesh aside, but purgatory had always been a distinct possibility. All the more if he'd failed in stopping the Valkyrie. Ivan had said that the Allies won, but that didn't mean that New York hadn't gone up in smoke, and what would it have mattered anyway? None of his surroundings were real. He would never know how the war had ended. If it had ended. He was trapped between worlds, likely forever. After all, who was left on Earth to pray him into heaven? Peggy was a Methodist. Steve despaired, lodged in limbo with a spectre of the man he had loved and failed so terribly.

But he spat to clear his mouth and rose up from the gravel. He did not look at his companion; whatever he was, he wasn't Bucky. There was nothing to do but go on.

**Natalia**  
**27 June 1988  
** Soviet campsite on the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula  
Northwest Territories, Canada

"You look guilty," said Natalia to the boy. Sam. Koschei had the boy's parents examining whatever Yaraschuk had carried in his case and the work preoccupied him; he continued to leave Sam to her, while Vasili trod lightly around her too. She didn't mind. "What have you done?"

"Unlike some people," said Sam, glaring. "I haven't done anything."

"Don't speak to Koschei like that," said Natalia, knowing she shouldn't try to help him, but thinking too that he needed to know. The soldier had warned her, after all. "He isn't nice like me." _Or_ , she thought _, like anyone._

**The soldier**  
**27 June 1988  
** Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula  
Northwest Territories, Canada

To the soldier's surprise, rather than revitalize him, the restoration of Grant's vision had laid him low. He had retched into the dirt, then spat and wiped his mouth, and when he stood, grim resignation replaced the friendly interest to which the soldier had become accustomed. Grant looked like a man going to his own execution, but if he suspected the soldier, why hadn't he struck? Strangely too, during their first real day of exertion, the soldier found himself striving to cheer Grant up. Each of them were capable and enjoyed the exercise, and the soldier was hopeful the station held not only food stores and a satellite radio — he didn't have one, since Koschei had not wanted to hear from him until his return — but gear as well. Grant's boots had nearly surrendered to the terrain.

While they walked, Vasili's description of the land returned to him. _Beautiful_. He derived no satisfaction from their surroundings himself, but did find pleasure in describing them to Grant, using the information instilled in him by Koschei and his machines to heal, not to harm. He pointed out the pingos in the distance, the passage of Arctic terns overhead and foxes' dens, an ermine in a vicious fight with a hare, and the ground below them, always frozen, but with an active layer of earth near the surface where green things grew. He spoke in floods, his old reserve crumbling, and Grant appreciated it all, though a persistent knot of unease in the soldier's chest reminded him of his impending return to cryo-stasis. Koschei had given him knowledge for the mission, but would never allow him to keep it: soon he would be empty. He was vaguely aware of past erasures, but of course, and maddeningly, he could not remember.

The thought that he then ought to enjoy the experience while he could surprised him too, because the prospect of enjoyment had not often crossed his path. Perhaps extended absence from cryo-stasis allowed such oddities to crop up. But Koschei had requested the blocker, he told himself, and samples of dead flesh; it was not disobedience to conceal what the man had no knowledge of. That thought, though, led down yet another path: knowing what Koschei and his machines were capable of, he had not found Grant's survival exceptional, thinking only that his handler might find it interesting. Trudging with Grant over marshy ground, though, had taught him to think it miraculous. While giving Grant rough history lessons as the Ranger liaison officer he pretended to be might have done — the expensive construction of the DEW Line, the influx of thousands of American workers to build it, the damage done to the region's peoples as the colonizers pushed northward, and the Canadians' fear of Russia and belief in their own Arctic sovereignty, even while their Arctic fellows starved — it occurred to him to consider how special Grant was.

"Any memories coming back?" he asked, when they stopped to rest. Vegetation had thinned as they drew nearer to the station and they rested in a dry place amid the wide stretches of small-blossomed shrubbery and carpets of peat moss.

Grant shook his head, though he wouldn't meet the soldier's eye. From his pocket, he pulled the compass the soldier had found with him. He opened it: inside, a faded photograph of a dark-haired woman. "Well... This was Peggy," he said. "She was my friend."

"Just your friend?" The soldier hadn't meant to sound — jealous? He swallowed hard.

Grant didn't seem to notice. "Just my friend. I'm sure about that." He looked to the sky and ran his hand through his hair. "There was someone else. That I loved. We went back and forth. I didn't treat them right, like I should have." He rolled his shoulders and stood. "Shall we? Or are you okay? You don't seem to get a lot of rest."

"I'm fine," said the soldier.

"I don't mind the ground, you know, or bunking down together. Better to have us both well-rested." He rubbed his jaw, then winced. His skin had pinked further. "Got a bit of sun."

"I'm fine," said the soldier.  **_(He had curled close, their single bed roll a pretence for — )_  **"Really."

Koschei discouraged him from thinking outside his mission parameters, but the longer the soldier spent away, the more he did so, with those strange and prickling thoughts intruding into his mind. If he followed his present course and took Grant to the abandoned station — and found a working radio to connect him to the outside world — how would he explain the absence of the desired samples to Koschei? Perhaps the mission’s true object was to test him, and when he failed, to rebuke him in front of Natalia, teach the child the brutal consequences of disobedience. Was Grant, then, some leftover from an old war? Or was this all some elaborate KGB test? He stole a sideways glance at Grant, whose own gaze tracked a falcon overhead, a flicker of delight bursting in his clear eyes. No, the soldier thought, he couldn't be Hydra, nor a Soviet ploy: Grant was nothing like he was. It was no good thinking in circles.

**Sam**  
**28 June 1988  
** Soviet campsite on the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula  
Northwest Territories, Canada

Sam wouldn't have thought you could get bored while kidnapped, but as it turned out, you could. Except for visits to the latrine, always guarded, and his daily visit with his parents, always too short, he was confined to the tent he'd woken in and on his brief ventures outside, could see nothing but the small slope that shielded the cove on one side and the ocean's shore on the other. Aside from Natalia — and occasionally, Vasili, though the man talked about nothing special and made no reference to Sam's beacon — his captors were silent, including the dreaded, bearded, overbearing Koschei. He had not been able to speak to his parents in any great detail, nor figure out how to tell them he'd activated his beacon, and while he was bored out of his mind, he was at the same time weighted with constant dread, like sitting down to a test when he’d forgotten all the material.

Not thinking about it was easier when Natalia was around and that afternoon in his stuffy tent, he asked, "Is Koschei your father?" He knew it was a mistake as soon as he said it. She was immediately tense and appalled, and afraid she would leave, Sam back-pedalled. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything by it. I just wondered." He winced. "Sorry. You just… You talked about your sisters."

She seemed mollified. "My parents are gone," she said.

"Oh," said Sam, embarrassed, though his heart thumped with fear for his own parents. "Sorry," he said again.

"Koschei's not his real name, you know." She sniffed, though whether in sadness or derision, Sam couldn't say. "Nobody knows his real name. And they're not my real sisters — well, they are, but not my blood sisters."

"Well, I didn't know," said Sam, prickly himself.

“‘Koschei’ is from — " She paused, searching for a word. "Fairy stories. Koschei the Deathless is — a wizard? Magician."

"Will you — " Sam looked away, shy about wanting more, but not so much that he wanted Natalia to stop. "Tell me the story?"

She brightened. "Koschei the Deathless, the magician, cannot be killed until you find his death."

"His what?"

"His death." She was impatient. "But of course, he hides his death on a needle, in an egg, in a duck, in a hare, in a chest across the ocean, and until you find it, you can never defeat him. It's like his… soul?"

Sam leaned forward, elbows on knees and listening.

"A long time ago, I don't know where, but somewhere in Russia, Prince Ivan married the Princess Marya Morevna, a great warrior," said Natalia. "Marya Morevna had locked Koschei in her castle, but one day she was away fighting and the prince let him escape."

"Why?"

"Because he was a fool, too gentle and kind, and Koschei tricked him," said Natalia. "And when he was free, Koschei stole Marya Morevna and rode away. Ivan tried to rescue her, but Koschei cut him into pieces and tossed him into the ocean."

Sam wrinkled his nose. "Gross."

"But his brothers gathered all the pieces and put them together," said Natalia, "and he tried to rescue her again, but this time he brought the fastest horse in the world, that he won in a wager, so Koschei couldn't catch them."

"Did he die? Koschei, I mean."

"Usually," said Natalia. "But all the stories are different. I like Marya Morevna's best, though. Ivan finds his death and burns Koschei to ash." Her voice had dropped to a whisper.

"It sounds like Bluebeard," said Sam, both to put her at ease and to keep her from leaving him alone.

Natalia wrinkled her nose. "What is Bluebeard?"

He told her.

**Steve  
** **28 June 1988**  
**Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula**  
**Northwest Territories, Canada**

Given what Sister Evangeline had taught him about purgatory, he could understand his exhaustion, his foot-weariness, but he could not explain nor could he have expected the way that bright and lonely landscape stirred him or the pleasantness of exertion with Ivan at his side. When they stopped that night to eat and rest, they had not been settled half an hour when a brown and grey vixen arrived, dragging a lemming carcass. Three kits crept from a den some feet away. Silently, he nudged Ivan and they both admired the small family while the vixen assessed them in turn. Having decided the men were not an immediate threat, she nudged the kits toward their supper.

"You see how the plants grow around their dens? The guts, their prey — fertilize it." Ivan squinted. "You're smiling," he said. "First time I've seen that on you since we got your bandages off."

In fact, Steve was more confused than ever; he had not expected happiness in his trials. Was one supposed to in his situation? And was Ivan was a fellow traveller through limbo or some spectral messenger? An angel maybe, or simply a figment? His belief tended toward the latter; it was not Bucky, who had died heaven-bound and no mistake. He wondered if he could ask. "Never saw foxes so close," he said instead. "How'd you end up here anyway?"

"Just a posting," said Ivan, watching the kits tumble over each other. "Go where they tell me."

"I know how that feels," said Steve.

"How'd you end up here?" Ivan caught his eye. "You remember anything else?"

Steve was apprehensive. Was he supposed to confess something, for purgatorial reasons? Since waking, he had not been able to muster concrete memories of his time in the ice — which made sense, if he was actually dead — but scenes of his life returned to him at random. In dreams, mostly, but at times in waking, too. Walking with his mother through busy streets, interminable hours at school or sick in bed… His compass, too, triggered such memories. He missed his shield and remembered his own voice: _I have to put her in the water._ "The plane," he said. "It was full of rockets. It was going to destroy New York. I tried to stop it."

"You did stop it. When we — " Ivan paused to pass him their tin cup, half-full of bitter coffee; he had boiled dandelion roots to supplement their supply. "When you get out of here, you'll see."

"My mother died when I was a kid," said Steve. "I mean, I was grown, I was 18, but I was a kid, you know? And when I was trying to put that plane down, Peggy was talking to me, she stayed on the line until the end, but all I could think of was my mother. She'd been gone for years, and all I could think was, 'don't let her get hurt.' I must have been out of my mind." He sighed. "I'll take first watch. You're running on empty and you've got to sleep sometime." He tossed the gritty dregs of their cup to the ground. "And eat, too — you can get back up to 50:50 rations, pal."

Ivan stood to poke at the fire; he looked about to argue, but to Steve's surprise — perhaps because Steve had caught him out on the rations— he yielded and curled up on the bed roll. The days were warm enough, especially once they got going, but the nights were cool. Steve straightened the blanket's end and Ivan tugged his cap down over his eyes to block the light. "That's how it is when you're fighting," he said. "You're out of your mind." He had turned his back in a gesture of immense trust that Steve did not fail to recognize and sleepily murmured, "But Sarah would have been proud of you, I bet."

He slept; Steve watched the fire go down.

**The soldier  
** **29 June 1988**  
**Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula**  
**Northwest Territories, Canada**

He woke confused, searching urgently for someone — for Grant. For Grant who sat with his knees pulled up to his chest while the sun hovered low in the night sky, a bright and scalding knot that demanded its onlookers turn away. It stained the narrow pillars of cloud and the horizon, its reflection glinting in the still water of the small lake near their camp. Water like crystal; he hadn’t known such a thing could be true, nor what had come over him to lower his guard as he had, only that the surreal comfort of sitting fireside with Grant had wrapped his body like well-worn clothes, lulling him to sleep. To complacency, more like.

"It's too peaceful," said Grant. "Damn bugs aside." As did the soldier's, his bites healed quickly, but they were still an irritation. The soldier had offered full use of the mosquito jacket, but Grant insisted they share it.

The soldier blinked, then stood and walked toward him, shivering as his body woke in the light and adjusted to the night's chill. He had woken with something worrying his memory, but couldn't place it.  **_(A man, clinging to the side of a rail-car and reaching out — )_ ** He shivered. His time in Koschei's keeping had given him a sixth sense where his own shortcomings were concerned, and warning rumbled distantly beneath his skin, alarm ringing in his blood, those strange thoughts, but he could not trace its source. "What is?"

Grant waved toward the long stretch of land before them. "This."

"Too peaceful for what?"

"To be what I think it is."

The soldier had no patience for riddles and did not respond, but sat at Grant's side, drawn to his warmth. "Only because we haven't met any wolves yet. Or polar bears."

"I realized something," said Grant, then as easily as he might have asked for directions, he added, "I never told you that my mother's name was Sarah."

The soldier gaped. "I never — " He caught himself. "Sure you did." Koschei's voice in his mind berated him: _you fool._

"I didn't," said Grant. "And you did say it. When I started the watch. 'Sarah would have been proud of you, I bet.'" He held the soldier's gaze. "Don't lie to me again. What is this place?"

"Canada." The soldier's training deserted him; he couldn't follow Grant's questions. The man was not suspicious of him, as he ought to have been, but of their situation. But what else he expected their situation to be, the soldier could not guess.  **_(This had been his most painful lesson: no matter how he wished for nightmares, it was always real, and — )_ **

"Who are you?" Grant was insistent, begging in his voice. The soldier knew the tone well. "Tell me the truth. How did you know my mother's name?"

The soldier faltered, looked away. He had said it, _Sarah would have been proud_ , but didn't know where he had learned it. Grant's eyelashes were delicate, his eyes a deep blue, and the soldier could not look away. His own history was at the bottom of that well.  **_(A boy kneeled to stuff his shoes with newspaper and — )_ ** Memories scraped at his mind, but he had no notion of what to say. He couldn't tell Grant the truth and destroy his legend, not because it revealed him as an enemy, but because he did not want Grant to hate or fear him. Perhaps everything — the mission, the plane, the man in the ice — was all a game of Koschei's… But he put this thought aside: he knew Natalia, knew waking from cryo-stasis and the cramped submarine voyage, knew landing on the Arctic shore. He knew what was real. "I'm not Ivan," he said, with all the honesty he could muster. "I didn't tell you the truth."

"I didn't think so," said Grant. "Keep talking."

His pulse skittered. Memories? He had nothing. He was blank. "I don't… My memories," he said, his voice high and panicked; he was in free-fall. "My memories, I'm like you, I…"

“You’re… Bucky?”

"Who the hell is Bucky?" The soldier blinked several times and put his hand to his knife. The name rattled in his head. In that moment, he would have been anything, anyone, for Grant's sake, but still: Bucky. _Bucky_. He knew what was real. "Barnes," he said, slowly, the words like stones in his mouth. "Bucky Barnes."

Grant threw his arms around the soldier's neck, and the soldier, startled, let him. "I thought you were dead. I thought you were dead, Bucky, oh thank god, thank god, Bucky, _god_." He clung fiercely to the soldier, while the soldier slumped bewildered in the wreckage of his life. "I knew you," said Grant. "Even when I couldn't remember you, when I didn't remember myself, it was your voice and your hands and I knew you, Bucky, what is going on?" 

He kissed the soldier's mouth, then, and although the kiss was chaste, the soldier felt in its urgency that it was not something between comrades but between lovers. He stiffened. "I don't — I know you," he said, his voice strained. "I know you, but I can't — " He dug the heel of his gloved hand into his forehead, wrenching himself from Grant's arms. "Bucky. That's me, but I can't remember — But I know you."

Grant was stricken, his eyes wide and his face flushed with shock and sunburn.

"We were on a bridge," said the soldier. "A walkway."

"Buck, are we both here?" He arched one eyebrow. "You know, ‘here?’"

The soldier didn't know what he meant. "There was fire all around us," he said. "And a train. I'm Bucky. I — " He clutched his left arm and hissed with remembered pain.  **_(He stared up from the snow and — )_ ** "I fell and I forgot." _Say it_ , he thought, ordering himself. _Say it, you know his name, tell the truth._ His thoughts came in Russian; he didn't know his first language. He couldn't be sure. _Say it, say it, say it, you goddamn coward. All your life you've been afraid, both of you._

"Bucky, come on," said Grant. "You and me. I promised you I'd fix it, that we'd get out and go home — you and me." His voice shook; he rubbed his mouth with his hand. "A week ago, don't you remember? I was standing next to you a week ago, Buck, please."

"Steve?" The soldier was pinned in agony: he wanted the truth, he wanted Grant — Steve? — to shut up, he wanted to disappear, and of all obscene desires, he wanted Koschei. He wanted to scream. He seized Steve's shirt-front in his left hand and shoved him to the ground, kneeling overtop him. "Tell me." He could make anyone talk. "Steve? We're like this?" The soldier growled, frustrated; he could not express himself. "We — I don't remember, but." Memory flared through him like a bullet:  **_the beach, confused, ashamed; Steve throwing up at a fairground and the sudden desire to wash his face, kiss his forehead; slouched in the back pew, fingers touching beneath a cast-off jacket; the first time they closed the bedroom door and faced each other honestly._ ** "It's wrong, but we didn't care?"

"I never thought it was wrong," said Steve. "I'm here, aren't I, for god's sake?”

The soldier said, "I remember," the words bursting from him, a dam breaking, and fell against Steve. Steve Rogers, the name Koschei had spoken that had clung to his ears. His best friend. His lover. Had he in fact returned, submitted to Koschei? Had his handler already applied the rod? Was he swirling in frozen nightmares? Perhaps none of it was real after all, and it was a dream, a test, the spasm of a diseased brain on its last gasp, but… No. He knew what was real. _I'm Bucky,_ he thought. _That's me._ "You found me," he said, and indulged the idle, dangerous fancy his heart had harboured since he first pulled Steve from the wreck: to stroke his hair, gently. It was coarse and damp with sweat; he combed out the remains of a squashed mosquito, leaving a smear of blood on his fingers. "It's fine," he said, more to soothe the other man than because he believed it. "It's fine now. I've got you." It seemed natural to say. Steve said something the soldier couldn't make out. "Hmm?"

"Buck, can you let me up?"

"Oh." The soldier did, though he kept his hand on Steve's arm. If he let go he would spiral into panicked blankness.

"Where are we? Really, I mean."

"Still Canada," said the soldier, focusing on his breathing. "Still on the peninsula. But you said, 'are we both here?' What did you mean?"

"I thought..." Steve wiped his face with his hand. "You'll laugh. Promise you won't laugh."

The soldier frowned. "I won't laugh."

"I thought," said Steve, looking down and mumbling. "That is, I thought I was in… Purgatory."

His next words fell from his mouth of their own volition: "well, that'd please the fuck out of Sister Evangeline, and no mistake, I — " The soldier realized what he had done, how a memory had spilled, and Steve himself burst out in raw, bright laughter and when he threw his arms around the soldier once again, the soldier did not shy away. He could not recall the last time another person had touched him without violence, fear, or clinical dispassion and he sagged against Steve in relief.

_It's a simple creature, really,_ said Koschei's voice in his head, but the soldier shook it off like he did the bugs.

*

For Steve, 1944 was only a week gone. They circled back to that fact again and again. _Can you believe it? No, I can't believe it. Can you believe it? No, I can't._

"It's really 1988?"

The soldier nodded.

"Went down in '44, been gone 44 years. Imagine it'll hit me later on." Steve shrugged. "Still a nice symmetry to it." 

"Yeah, well, you have artistic sensibilities" said the soldier. He said it to make Steve smile, and it worked. He remembered that Steve was an artist, at least, though he did not yet have all the memories or answers that both he and Steve wanted, and shied away from telling Steve all that he had done. "I was on a mission," he said.

"For the Russians?"

"For Ko — yes, for the Russians. To find your plane"

Steve's eyes said he had caught the slip, but chosen to ignore it. "But you said we're fighting the Russians now. Why would you — " He faltered. “You…”

The soldier could not meet his eyes.

"You survived the fall," said Steve. His hands shook and the soldier wanted to hold them. "They took you, and your memories. Made you… And I didn't… I was right there and I didn't — "

"I don't remember it," said the soldier, trying to make Steve feel better. "Not really." What he wanted most of all, in that moment, was to keep Steve from harm. If Steve knew all that he had done, all that he was — Well, he couldn't let him know. Not yet.

But Steve said, "Bucky, what happened to you?"

_Bucky, what happened to you?_

_What happened? Bucky? You?_

_Bucky?_

_You?_

Steve hissed in pain: the soldier had forced him to his knees, holding him at the wrist, but at the sight of what he'd done, he stumbled backward, horrified. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry, I — "

"No harm done," said Steve, shaking out his wrist. But he watched Bucky warily, as if any gesture might set him off.

Perhaps it could have done. All the soldier had wanted was to keep Steve from harm, yet within moments… Fear closed his throat.

"We're safe out here," said Steve, his hands out. "You can tell me. If you want. I'm guessing it wasn't good."

"They needed — " The soldier swallowed. "They needed a soldier. One that wouldn't balk, any job, any mission. I wasn't what they wanted." Koschei told him so often. _What do the Americans say? Second string?_ "But they made do. Made it work."

"Made you work."

"I can't — " He couldn't finish.

Steve rubbed the bridge of his nose. "We'll keep going," he said. "Okay? And we'll try not to do that again." He held out his hand to help the soldier to his feet, but the soldier skittered backward, not trusting himself to the touch. Steve sighed. "I never was made of glass, Buck."

**Natalia**  
**29 June 1988**  
**Soviet campsite on the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula  
Northwest Territories, Canada**

Sam enjoyed Natalia's stories and she enjoyed telling them, figuring Koschei wouldn't mind, so long as she eventually got something useful. Besides, before they had begun exchanging tales, she'd nearly run out of ideas for what to do with him. She had even considered asking Vasili to borrow his small chess board, rather than sit another hour in stuffy silence. Perhaps with good information, too, she could sooth Koschei's mounting frustration. The soldier was nearly overdue.

"Do these come from books?" Sam sat across from her. "At home, stories usually come in books." He chewed his lip. "But sometimes in comics or on the radio. Or movies and TV too, I guess. I like comics best." He dug in his pocket and pulled out a creased card. "This is my favourite," he said. "Captain America — he was a real person. Here, you can hold it if you want."

Natalia took the card, estimated a respectful time to consider the smiling American caricature it displayed, then handed it back. The thing was clearly precious to him. She wondered if that was the sort of information that would interest Koschei. "Some are in books," she said. "But there are many versions and some are only told."

"Can you tell me one of those?"

She had one in mind, but it was forbidden, dangerous enough with her sisters when any one of them could inform to Koschei, and more so with a stranger.

"I mean, you don't have to," said Sam, with disappointed sincerity.

"There's a woman," she said, deciding. "And this is a secret story, absolutely secret. Somewhere, I don't know where, but somewhere in Russia…" (She did know where; it was the Red Room.) "There was a woman, a warrior like Marya Morevna. The greatest fighter of her family. She lived in Koschei's castle, and she fought for him." (Natalia meant the Koschei who was nearby even then, not the mythical magician, but did not tell Sam so. Everyone in the Red Room knew rumours of their traitor predecessor, a Widow who had betrayed the Soviet Republic, broken her vows, been stripped of every rank and honour — and held power enough to do so…) "She fought for him all over the world, in every country and city," she said. "But one day, while Koschei was distracted, she opened the castle door and cursed Koschei and disappeared into the sun."

"What happened to her?"

"Nobody knows," said Natalia, also dissatisfied with the story's conclusion.

"Did she have a name?"

"Oh," she said, embarrassed at having forgotten that part. "Koschei called her Yulia, but she stole another name when she left." Natalia's sister, Yana, had whispered it to her in the night, but only after extracting the most stringent pledge of silence. In America, where Yulia had once fought Koschei's wars, then betrayed him and run, they called her Dottie.

**Steve  
** **29 June 1988**  
**Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula**  
**Northwest Territories, Canada**

Steve wanted to keep moving, needed to burn off the fire inside him, and while they trekked northeast, they pieced their stories together: Bucky taken by the Red Army from the bottom of the Swiss ravine and waking in fogged nightmare, and Steve at the London pub, in the mountain laboratory, crashing the Valkyrie. Koschei, the ghoul that had held Bucky captive for so many years — that held him now: he could barely say more of the man than his name.

"There's a machine," Bucky said, with effort. They were walking through a wide field of low grasses, the stalks rustling around their feet, and Steve was grateful for the level ground that helped him hid a pesky limp. Small birds arced in the sky, flying high overhead. "You asked me how I survived? He takes me out of my mind." Still moving, he took off his gloves and jacket for the first time in Steve's sight to show his left arm.

Steve gasped. He couldn't help it: metal gleamed in the sunlight, a prosthetic out of a pulp novel, a mechanical man in an Arctic wilderness. The plates rippled when Bucky flexed his fingers. Steve jogged forward, wincing, then held his hand over it, but when Bucky nodded, he stroked the metal gently. "Can you feel that? They did — they gave you this?"

Bucky nodded. "It feels things the way a normal hand would, just… More."

They kept walking, Bucky with his gloves jammed in his pants-pocket and his heavy jacket slung over his arm — a lope, the kind of amble that used to carry them through Brooklyn. "Can you. Can it. Does it hurt? Did they hurt you?"

Bucky shook his head.

Steve could have kicked himself for the inane question; of course Bucky had been hurt. He remembered pulling Bucky from the table at Krossberg; he had been lit through with terror and incandescent fury at the sight of Bucky delirious, half-dressed in singed rags.

"Not exactly," said Bucky, "but…"

Steve leaned close to map the metal shoulder with his fingertips, tracing the plates that buzzed with the low hum of their mechanics. Bucky had been terrorized; it was Krossberg a hundred times over. "It must have been the tests," he said. "Zola's experiments and a bastardized version of Dr. Erskine's formula. Wish you could have met Abraham, Buck. He was the real deal."

"I still feel it," said Bucky, with a small smile. Talk of Koschei aside, he seemed to relish the return of his memories, or at least the ability to speak of them without fear of reprisal. But maybe Steve imagined that. "My arm. Feels sometimes like I didn't lose it, even though it's not there. It hurts, though there's nothing… And I can feel it, what I do, but they flip a switch and I'm locked inside."

"How long has it been?" Steve had seen him, touched him, held him — lost him — a week before. He could not fathom Bucky's decades of solitude, much less his own hibernation.

"Since the train," said Bucky. "But I'm in cryo-stasis most of the time," he added, hurriedly, like he worried for Steve's feelings and sought to lessen the blow.

Steve pulled back, suddenly hands-off, wondering if Bucky wanted his touch, remembering how he had stiffened at his kiss. The last thing he wanted was to lever Bucky's will through some warped sense of obligation.

Bucky blinked, startled too, and said, "Please — " He flushed. "I don't mind."

"You don't mind," said Steve, "or you want it?" Bucky said nothing. Steve gently took his left hand. "This okay?" It was like before, when they had been so afraid: _you want this, this okay, you don't mind, you sure, you sure?_

Bucky nodded; his breathing settled and his tension slipped away. "Koschei wakes me up when I'm needed, and I don't." He bit his lip, looking downward to his left, then back at Steve. "I don't remember everything. I mean, I remember what I did." He flushed. "But not when, or where, or why they wanted it. It all blurs together. All I know for sure is why I did it."

"Why?" Steve asked only because he thought Bucky wanted to tell him.

"Because he tells me to." His voice was thick with disgust.

"There was a kid we pulled out of Krossberg," said Steve. "Last — well, last year, I guess. For me. Latched onto Morita, wouldn't leave his side and wouldn't say boo to a goose the whole march back." He wondered what had happened to Morita, to the boy, to all their friends. "We got back to camp, Morita reported to the head doc, got separated from the kid. You remember him?" Bucky shook his head, but waved Steve on. "Next thing I know, everyone's screaming bloody murder, the kid's snapped and stabbed three guys in triage."

Bucky looked down. "It was Daniels… Private Daniels? " He scoffed. "I'd remember the violence, natch."

"That's right," said Steve, softly. "Took three more guys to hold him down and Phillips almost gave up and shot him before you tracked Morita down to explain."

"Hydra tortured him," said Bucky. "Until they owned him."

"Morita confirmed it. Phillips had him sedated, then discharged. Nobody died." Steve shrugged. "Wasn't the worst thing to happen in that war. Christ, it wasn't the worst thing to happen that month. But even then, you knew it wasn't his fault."

"It's not the same."

Steve shrugged. "'That's how it is when you're fighting.'"

"Don't turn that around on me," said Bucky. "I wasn't an innocent, like that kid when they got their hooks into him. And I was jealous of Peggy. When you had her picture out, I didn't know her and I was still jealous."

"We're friends," said Steve. Nausea rippled through him; somewhere out there, Peggy was in her sixties. He didn't know anyone that old. He rubbed his eyes. "I guess, we _were_. The three of us, I mean. You and her are — were my best friends. I know I messed up, flirting. A girl had never…" He blushed. "I'm sorry, is what I mean. I wanted to say that and I never did, and then I thought I lost you." A handful of days before, he had kissed Peggy goodbye. Had she survived the war? Would she still work for the SSR? Would the SSR still exist?

Bucky's voice brought him back to himself. "I've done worse things."

"Not you," said Steve. "Not from anything you've told me." Then, because the time seemed right, and if not then, when, he said, "You were never taking me to this bastard Koschei, were you? Even when you didn't know who I was, you were protecting me."

"Well, more fool me," said Bucky, looking caught out. "He doesn't — leastways, I think he doesn't know about you, and I don't want him to. What I want is to do go back to that expo and smack myself for not spending every scrap of time with you I could."

Steve shrugged. All his life, he'd wanted to change the past: save his father, save his mother, save Bucky, treat Peggy better. He'd accepted it couldn't be done. "Love you too, Buck."

"You believe me?"

"Should I not?"

"No, I — "

"Ribbing you," said Steve. "Sorry. Besides, I thought I was dead. How is this less believable?"

"Let me look at your eyes," said Bucky, changing the subject. "Never seen anybody heal so fast, except me." He turned and nudged Steve's chin, tilting his face down to brush his thumb over Steve's cheekbone. His hand trembled. Steve nodded. ”God, I missed you," said Bucky, and pressed a gentle kiss there.

**The soldier  
** **29 June 1988**  
**Atkinson Point Station  
Northwest Territories, Canada**

"This is it?" Steve assessed the weather-beaten radar dome and the squat, aging outbuildings with a skeptical eye. The buildings clustered along a long shoreline, surrounded by other small bodies of water while a narrow track carved into the earth lead the soldier and Steve forward. Some greenery had sprung up along the track's edges, while elsewhere, though it was sparser than further south, the soldier spotted pink-blossomed bog rosemary and bilberry bushes among the sedge. _If steeped in sun-warmed water_ , he thought, recalling the survivalist lore Koschei had burnt into his mind, _the rosemary could soften a cough in a pinch_. His mind flashed fresh sparks, dug new runnels, raced and circled. Generally Koschei's values — order and the application of all knowledge to cold, practical action — ruled the soldier's decisions. With Steve, though, the memories threading the warp and weft of the soldier's re-emerging self sought instead to turn such information into service: to bring relief, increase comfort, express love. Koschei wanted him to survive and serve, but he wanted more, and though Steve no longer coughed as he once had, the soldier still by habit sought to soothe him.

"Reminds me of Camp Lehigh," said Steve.

"It really is a station," said the soldier, leaving thoughts on the sedge's medicinal properties for the mental image of Steve's frail pre-serum self running drills at a military training camp.  **_(You threw yourself on a_ grenade _, Steve?)_** “Abandoned now, mostly. They check on it in the summer, like I said, but it's too early yet for that. And the locals still use the spot, of course, for hunting, travelling, or to go north to Banks Island, not to mention the oil men." He reviewed Koschei's lessons: "Reindeer herding, too." He led Steve to an outbuilding alongside the dome, then gave the knob a sharp twist with his metal hand, and motioned for Steve to follow him inside. "We can resupply here." Inside, a black wood-stove, a naked cot, a tall cupboard; the soldier opened the latter, eyeing leftover tins of food and musty bedding. He patted his jacket to confirm the weight of his pocket knife, complete with tin opener. Alongside one wall stood a long bar, lined with dusty, mismatched glasses, like its past inhabitants had stopped mid-party. "This will do," he said. "Look, boots. See if they fit."

"I thought you said it was abandoned," said Steve, digging through another cupboard, rummaging through piles of gear. “Well, it’s bigger than our apartment, so I guess there’s that.”

"They left a lot behind when they went," said the soldier. Steve had stopped at the window, furrow in his brow, and the soldier crossed the room to join him. Behind the building, rusted tools and barrels lay scattered among other rubbish: the skeleton of a typewriter, old bones, the rush of plant growth that suggested contamination by human sewage.

"All our garbage too, I see," said Steve, softly.

"The station had served its purpose," said the soldier, trying to explain those whose thoughts ran that way. Steve gave him a strange and sad look. _He never liked waste_ , the soldier thought, though he smiled to himself at the certainty of the memory.

"There's nowhere to put it," said Steve, "but we might as well try and clean it up." Set on a mission he was unstoppable, so the two climbed into musty coveralls pulled from the cupboard and spent the remainder of the afternoon at work, piling as much of the site's garbage as they could gather close to the buildings and filling the righted barrels to concentrate the mess. "Better," he said, when they had finished, though he did not sound confident.

*

That night, after they had washed and eaten and crawled into bed, the soldier lay awake next to Steve in the narrow cot. Much of the station's inventory had been stripped for parts and to his great frustration, it lacked the satellite radio he had expected, but together — and using a few items salvaged from the Valkyrie — he and Steve had managed to jury-rig the station's old White Alice radio connection into temporary service. "Won't go far," he had said, explaining to Steve, "but I figure we could at least get a signal to Storm Hills. That's another station, further south and manned through the summer." He had put off questions, though, about what they might do next, even talking Steve out of trying to raise Storm Hills before morning, and exhausted from their labours, they had slept — until he jolted awake tangled in a nightmare, remembering nothing of his dream but a bloody knife.

Other memories overlapped. He had slept like this a hundred times, hundreds of times, with Steve a warm and peacefully demanding presence next to him: nuzzling close, granting freely the same affection he yearned to have returned to him. His hand had closed gently around the soldier's left and the soldier had felt no desire to shake him off; it was enough to be close.

He thought about the blocker in his pack, about what it would take to run and if he could do it. If he could do it again: he had brought himself and Steve as far as the station, a feat in itself, but there in the bed he remembered suddenly and in a cold sweat that he had run once before and been captured, hauled before Koschei on his knees within a month, too cowed to beg forgiveness. He thought about Natalia waiting for his return, unable to stomach the thought of abandoning her to Koschei's deathless ambition, and of Koschei's talk of _Rogers_ and _Erskine_ , Yaraschuk and the American chemist, the demand for tissue samples. It was clear at last: Koschei wanted the serum, the chemical mixture that had turned Steve into a superhuman. _Of course, idiot_ , said Koschei's voice in his head. He thought of Steve and Natalia, his two guiding stars, and of his own monstrosity: bloody knives and all that he could not bear for Steve to see. 

He freed his hand and slipped from the cot. In a scrawled note, he explained how to use the White Alice system, then placed it beneath one of the dusty glasses and made for the door without looking back. He would be late for his check-in, but if he was careful, diffident, obedient, Koschei would never catch Steve.

**Steve**  
**30 June 1988**  
**Atkinson Point Station**  
**Northwest Territories, Canada**

Having been largely incapable of deep sleep since Krossberg, Steve had felt Bucky leave the bed, but bone-tired as he was, he was still late to clue in: Bucky was twenty paces from the station by the time Steve called him from the doorway. Still, the sound of his name froze him where he stood. With the sky light and Steve's serum-enhanced vision, he could see the shudder of hesitation in Bucky's shoulders, but Steve had not come this far, thousands of miles, forty-four years, to surrender. "James Buchanan Barnes," he called, pitching his voice across the distance between them, "don't you dare go to war without me again." Bucky lingered. Steve's heart thudded; he had to trust; he went back inside.

_ Bucky was twenty paces from the station by the time Steve called him from the doorway. Still, the sound of his name froze him where he stood. _

* * *

"Thank god," he said, when Bucky's shadow filled the doorway. "Who knows what kind of trouble you'd get up to without me." His wobbling voice, though, betrayed his attempt at humour.

"I have to go back," said Bucky. He kicked the desk and growled, frustrated, then fell into the chair next to Steve at the rickety table. "I have to. I can't tell you what… Or explain all that's happened, what I've done. You couldn't understand. I hardly understand, it's all patchy, it burns and I've hurt so many — "

"You owe these men nothing but a bullet," said Steve. He placed his hands over Bucky’s, feeling Bucky relax as he turned his wrists to intertwine their fingers. "And it's not your job to protect me, not like that. I know that's what you were trying to do." He knew he had hit the truth. "Together," he said, "or not at all."

"I used to say that to you," said Bucky. "Right?"

"When I was getting into fights. Not that I listened." He ducked his head, a little shy.

"There's a girl," Bucky said, after a long pause. "She's a kid, I can't leave her there, and a family, too. I know what Koschei wants from them."

Steve freed one hand to rub his jaw. "I know there's lots you don't want to tell me, Buck, or that you can't, and you don't have to, but… What does he want? There's something you're not saying. Come on."

"I heard them talking, before I left," said Bucky, looking away.

Steve realized that he'd ordered him without meaning to, that Bucky's experiences forced him to comply, and he shuddered. He hadn't thought about what it cost Bucky to be honest with him.

"They'd talk in front of me, didn't matter. I was furniture," said Bucky. "They said your name, and it stuck in my head but I didn't know why."

"You think they wanted me? They knew where I was?" The truth dawned on him. "It's the serum, and you — you martyr!" He was furious that Bucky would surrender all he had so recently regained; he was the one who made sacrifices, not his friends — not the people he loved. "You were going back without me? With what they — he’s — like and you’re late now, but you were…“

Bucky looked sheepish. “I think…. I think that you’re the one he wants. That he always wanted.”

Steve gulped. "Together or not at all," he said. "We'll get the kid back, but in the morning, okay? You've got to sleep."

Bucky split their supplies into two packs, now that a spare bag had been rooted out. He also insisted on checking Steve's feet again. "You're lucky to heal so fast," he said, digging his thumb into the arch of the left foot and extracting a wince. "Blisters could cripple you otherwise, especially on wet ground."

"Thanks, Ma." Steve remembered briefings at Camp Lehigh and at SSR headquarters once they'd landed in Italy: dry your feet, socks, and boots, because trench-foot is the last thing you want. He took Bucky's right hand, since healed, and gave it a squeeze. "Same to you."

Bucky blushed.

"I meant it, though," he said, when Bucky turned his attention to his own kit.

"Meant what?"

"What I promised you. That we'd get out, go home."

Bucky was still.

"You say we won the war?" Steve shrugged. Pulled on clean socks and donned his boots. "Then I'm not going back. To the army, I mean. When this is done, we disappear." He hadn't the faintest idea how to accomplish such a thing — his life had never held the breadth or depth needed for him to make his own choices in any meaningful way — but still he was sincere. "I let you talk me out of raising Storm Hills last night, you know."

Bucky looked up with grace enough to show chagrin.

"There's no one better than us to do what we have to do," said Steve. "And the fewer people involved, the better our chance of making ourselves scarce when it's done, but don't think you were putting one over me."

Bucky's reply was cut off when the radio screeched to life in a wail of static, but through the wail — and after he peeled himself off the ceiling — Steve could pick out a series of clicks in rhythmic repetition. He closed his eyes to listen. "Is that — "

"That's an SOS," said Bucky, who had also jumped to his feet. "Where's it coming from?" He glared at the old screen, then thumped the console in frustration. "This system's hopeless, totally obsolete. There's no way — " Another static screech and the SOS grew in strength and volume; a bright spot pinged on the console screen. "That doesn't make any sense. It's right here, or it should be, and it’s sending some kind of signal this system can’t interpret. Right on-site, here." He pointed to the screen, agitated.

Not for the first time, Steve lamented the loss of his shield, but he squared his shoulders and jerked his head toward the door. Bucky fell into step behind him and they crept outside. He wasn't so naive as to ignore the signs of a trap, but an SOS made certain demands on a man: he had to help, if he was able.

When they stepped outside, though, they found themselves facing a man whose expression, wide eyes in a sun-worn face, suggested he was as surprised as them. He was about twenty feet away, but Steve's eyes were sharp: the man wore a Ranger's armband. Bucky moved to stand in front of him.

"This your radio tag?" the man said, calling across the distance with his fist raised. "Picked up the signal from the shore. Not your usual bird and tracker, eh?"

When Steve squinted, he saw that said fist held a small bird. He had never been one to back down in a fight, or to hold back from one but there was a fair difference between standing one's ground and instigating conflict. Plus, he didn't need Bucky acting like he was still 90 pounds soaking wet: he could take care of himself. He slipped around Bucky, almost expecting a clip around the ear, but swung out his hand in a cheerful wave, figuring there was no harm in going out sociable. "Hi," he said. "I'm Steve. Not my tag or my bird, though."

"Charlie," said the man, returning Steve's wave. "Charlie Green. You with Imperial?"

"What," said Steve, and fancied he could feel Bucky shudder at his ineptitude as a spy.

"You fellows are oil men?" said Charlie, giving them the eye. "With Imperial?"

Bucky shifted to a fighting stance, but Steve cut him off when he drew breath to speak. "Not with Imperial, no." He pointed. "That armband — You a Ranger, Charlie?" Bucky again tried to speak, but Steve again interrupted and true to form, at least, he went all in. "Here's the thing, Charlie," he said. "A squad of Soviet soldiers have landed down the coast. They've got our friends and we'd like to get them back, and that's what we're doing."

For the second time, Steve expected Bucky to cuff him, but all he got was an exasperated, "For Christ's sake, Steve."

Charlie Green had been a Ranger for more than 15 years. He was also a guide, often leading sport hunters and fishermen or prospectors over the peninsula or down into the Delta, a translator for the regional government, and a hunter and trapper for both food and fur, answering Steve’s questions with modest detail. He was short and thin, but strong, clearly muscular, with a shock of dark hair and a clean-shaven face, and Steve, for his part, felt Bucky's eyes on him as he offered the man their story — mostly truthful but for their proper names and ages and Bucky's own affiliation with the Soviets in question.

"That's quite a tale," said Charlie. By this time, he and Steve had hunkered down at a battered picnic table, while Bucky refused to settle, scanning the site, fingers tapping on the table. Neither of them had recognized the bird’s radio tag, while even Charlie’s newer radio made the same gibberish of whatever signal it was trying to send.

Steve said, "That's why we broke in here and that's where we're going. There's a family in trouble: two parents and their son."

"And a girl," said Bucky.

Steve gave him an apologetic glance and was relieved to see Bucky roll his eyes.

"Could you prove it?" said Charlie. "And could you tell me who you are, if you're not Rangers yourselves? You're army?"

"We're Americans," said Steve, watching Bucky's fingers tap. "And we could show you the camp, but you might not want to come with us."

Charlie looked thoughtful. “Americans, you say? What are the children's names?"

"Natalia Romanova," said Bucky. He pushed his hand flat against the table. "She's Russian, but she's not safe with them. And Sam Wilson."

"And your names?"

"Steve Rogers," said Steve and held his breath. Charlie didn't react. "And…" He looked at Bucky.

"Bu — " Bucky blinked. "James Barnes."

Steve felt a smile tugging at his mouth; he tried to be serious.

Charlie rose and dusted off his pants. "I was going to the islands, but your tracks made me curious, and then my radio went haywire with that SOS," he said. "But I've banked my boat and it'll wait. Take me to this camp."

"You don't have to help us," said Bucky. He rose to his feet, rolled his shoulders. "Not if you don't want."

"I saw a submarine once," said Charlie, standing too. "In the ocean near Coppermine. In the distance I could see men walking on its back. If they're there, if I see them, I want to report them." He raised an eyebrow. "And you Americans too, maybe." He laughed, then looked Steve up and down. "You're sure we haven't met?"

"Just one of those faces," said Steve.

**The soldier  
** **2 July 1988**  
**Soviet campsite at Drift Point on the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula**  
**Northwest Territories, Canada**

The three of them arrived at the edge of Koschei's camp near dawn two days later. Steve's unabashed truth-telling had spurred another flourish of memory in the soldier, scenes of Steve’s brash honesty that he'd contemplated while they walked. The familiar arch of Steve's eyebrow had said, _Didn't have time to ask you, sorry, but I know you've got my back_ , and that more than anything had settled the soldier's nerves. When he was frozen, unable to act, Steve stepped in. They protected each other. He cleared his mind for the coming fight.

Above the early-morning fog that hung thick along the shore and low on the ground, Natalia sat on a large rock flipping her knife, and when the soldier raised his hand to silence her as he approached, she obeyed. They crouched to conceal themselves from sight and so that they did not tower over the child, and the soldier said, "I'll talk to her." Then, <What can you tell me, Natalia?>

<Koschei is very cross> she said, looking past him in cool assessment of Steve and Charlie, who were some feet back. <You're late and the boy's parents are not cooperating. Vasili is pissing himself — > The soldier sucked his teeth; she rolled her eyes, but self-corrected. <Vasili is _afraid_ that they've lost you and has insisted the Americans must be in perfect condition, or we’ll all be exiled. > Her hands stilled a moment. <But Koschei said if you didn't come soon, I would have to kill the boy.> She tore her gaze from Steve and Charlie at last to look the soldier in the eye. <But you're back, so I won't have to, will I?>

The soldier frowned. <Don't let him hear you speak that way.>

<You always say that> said Natalia, defiant. <You never say, _don't do this._ You say, _don't let him catch you_. >

The soldier ignored that. <Natalia, why did Koschei bring you here?> She was puzzled and no wonder: Koschei loved his riddles and trick questions. He rephrased. <What do I teach you?>

<To fight.>

<That's right> said the soldier. <What else? What does Koschei want you to learn?>

<To kill?>

His throat closed; he coughed. <I taught you to fight, Natalia, but Koschei used me to teach you to obey. Do you understand? Tell me the truth.>

She shook her head. <I don't, soldier.>

<Just by standing in front of you, I taught you to obey, to follow an order by choice, or they'd take your choice away. Like they did with me. You don't want to be like me, do you?>

She blushed.

<Do you?> Koschei cultivated nightmarish tales about him among the little Widows. To avoid him was the carrot; to become him, the stick. Natalia was one of the few fearless ones.

Blushing harder, she shook her head.

<There's nothing wrong in telling the truth> he said. <Natalia, I'll need you to save this boy.>

She smiled, relieved, then quickly suppressed her reaction. <Yes, soldier.>

He rose up on his knees and took her by the shoulders. <You were always a good student. In the tales, how did Koschei the Deathless die at last?> He did not mean their handler, but instead, the magician of fairy stories.

<His death was on the head of a needle> said Natalia, as though reciting a lesson. <The needle was in an egg, in a duck, in a hare, in a chest across the ocean.>

<We've come across the ocean, Natalia> said the soldier. <And Koschei's death is here.> He meant their Koschei, then, and knew she understood. <I will find it.>

She nodded, grim and fierce and small.

He handed her a map, then took Steve's pack and set it against her perch. In English, he said, "This is Steve and this is Charlie." Steve and Charlie each gave a little wave; the two had haltingly conversed as the three made their way back to Koschei's camp, while the soldier had kept silent." They're going to help us, and if anything happens to me, if we're not back in an hour, Charlie's going to get you out of here."

<But I can help you.>

<You're helping me now. Sam isn't like you. He'll need your protection. His parents, too.> When Natalia was nine years old, she had once — and only once — called him father. By whatever grace had been afforded to them both, Koschei had not been near, and the soldier had knelt as he did there on the shore, taken her firmly by the shoulders, and ordered her to never do so again if she knew what was good for her. The next time he was torn from cryo-stasis to train the little Widows, it had taken days to remember her, and she hardly dared look at him. It was better that way. "Go on, now. Get out of here."

<What about you?> Natalia tilted her head a fraction. "And them."

The soldier looked to Steve, who had covered his blond hair with Charlie's Ranger's cap and fastened the soldier's armband about his own bicep. From a distance, in the fog and if the others were unsuspecting, he and the soldier would look much the same. <Don't worry about me> said the soldier. "My friend and I will take care of Koschei's men; you take care of the Americans."

Near the shore of that cold ocean, Natalia said, "I'll get them out." Then, resolute: <I still wish you were my father.>

He once had sisters, but could not recall their faces. He stood, then helped Natalia to the ground. "Parents first," he said. "Steve'll get the boy."

Charlie broke in then. "And I'll wait here for you, okay?"

"Together," said Steve, his hand on the soldier's arm. "And hello." He held out his hand to Natalia, but the girl recoiled and ran off.

"She does as she's trained," said the soldier, by way of an explanation. The three men rose.

**Sam  
** **1 July 1988**  
**Soviet campsite at Drift Point on the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula**  
**Northwest Territories, Canada**

When footsteps sounded outside the tent, Sam sat up, blinking sleepily in the early morning but eager for another of Natalia's weird Russian stories and with a few ideas for ones he might tell her. Instead, after the sounds of a struggle, brief scrabbling, a man he'd never met entered with a finger to his lips to forestall Sam's exclamation.

The man was tall and blond, roughly dressed in mismatched army greens and an ill-fitting baseball cap. "Hi," he said. "I understand from the guard outside that you're being held here against your will?"

Sam gaped like a fish. He saw that face every day on his favourite trading cards, but surely it couldn't be… The man flashed a smile, though, and Sam knew. 

"I need you to be brave for me right now, pal," said the man, "and when you get outside, I want you to run, and keep running, straight up from the beach until you find the redheaded girl — "

"Natalia?"

"Yeah, that's right. And a dark-haired man dressed like me." He pointed to his armband, a dark ring of fabric printed with a small shield. "Can you do that?"

"What about my parents?"

"Natalia's got your parents. Don't worry."

"Great Scott," said Sam, for lack of anything better.

"Steve, actually," said Captain America, grinning.

**The soldier  
** **1 July 1988**  
**Soviet campsite at Drift Point on the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula**  
**Northwest Territories, Canada**

The shore breeze stirred low wisps of fog. Koschei would already be awake, working behind the safety of mosquito netting to transmit coded reports to the submarine offshore while Vasili prepared breakfast on the camp stove glowing a few feet distant. He was, at least, a creature of habit; the soldier approached silently.

<You're late> said Koschei, without looking up from the small desk set up at the front of his tent. <Make no mistake: I have delayed our departure for your information and for the blocker, not for you. Report.> He looked briefly to Vasili, fidgeting at his left. <You, bring me Romanova. And breakfast.>

_ The soldier surveyed his handler: Koschei was frail, his hair and beard greying, his arms thin, and still the soldier feared him. _

* * *

The soldier surveyed his handler: Koschei was frail, his hair and beard greying, his arms thin, and still the soldier feared him. But he gathered his courage, trusting Steve to protect Natalia. <The wreckage had been there many years> he said, <but I could not place the technology. Foreign. Nothing I've seen before.> He swallowed, then lied. <No bodies, but full weapons. Likely an unmanned craft. Besides the blocker, other technology possibly worth salvaging. I obtained samples.> He gestured to his pack.

<Concise> said his handler, still without looking up. <That took more than a week?>

<The craft was half-buried in the frozen ground. So were the samples.> The soldier was as insolent as he dared, and his fresh-sparking mind knew that even such limited impertinence would have been physically impossible little more than a week before. <I also completed a five-mile perimeter scan for accompanying craft; there were none. The ship was off-course, almost certainly. No trace of human passage.> He had made sure of that.

<I don't like 'almost.'> His handler signed the paper before him with a neat flourish. <Kneel.>

Fear rushed through the soldier's body, trailed by shame and concession, and he folded before his handler.

<You're tired> said Koschei.

<Yes, sir.> He wasn't. He bent his head, not wanting to; his body knew the routine.

<You want to sleep.>

He didn't. He hated being mocked this way, these questions that were not questions, these requests that could not be denied. His body refused him. <Yes, sir.>

Koschei picked up a small rod from the desk. It crackled and sparked with blue light.

The soldier shivered, sweating and despising himself.

<You regret that your incompetence embarrasses those who keep you alive, who give you purpose.>

<Yes, sir.> The word "catechism" came into his mind. He would receive no new mission; he would not escape with Steve; he would go back to sleep. The rod was the first step, incapacitation, the fog that invaded and erased his thoughts, followed by return to cryo-stasis. He had wanted a new mission, to stay awake, so badly, and he wouldn't get it. He would be denied. But he could help Steve and Natalia escape. 

<You understand that incompetence cannot be rewarded with lenience.>

<Yes, sir.> The soldier bared his neck and thought of Steve's throat, smooth and unblemished; of Steve walking tall, assured in his grip on the soldier's elbow; of Steve's eyes, so blue and bright that the soldier had needed to hide them. He thought of Steve who did not fear him and of his own name. _Bucky_. He closed his eyes.

<Now tell me, where is the American captain?>

The soldier jerked his head up. Felt his eyes widen in a response beyond his control. <Sir?>

<The American, you idiot.> Koschei slapped him hard. <Vasili!> The attaché had not retrieved Natalia, nor did he come when called. The soldier didn't know if Steve and the girl had succeeded. Koschei slapped him again, rocking him backward. <Where is he? 'No bodies'? Did you think you could get away with it? That I couldn't take you, the captain, and SHIELD's potion together? You're not an agent, you're an asset. Vasili!>

The soldier, hating himself still, cowered, but forced himself to raise his head. His body refused to attack Koschei, but he could speak. He owned his voice. "You'll never touch him," he said, and braced for the last blow.

Instead, Koschei choked, then crumpled to the tent floor with the contents of his desk strewn around him. He was unconscious; no, he was dead. He had to be; the soldier was sure of it. Time flickered and he whirled, the plates of his arm adjusting as he balanced his weight, to find Steve at the tent-flap, bright-eyed with all the chaotic cheek that used to get him punched in the nose. He had struck Koschei head-on with a scalding cooking pot. Wet oats lay spread across the tent floor.

"No shield," he said, half-apologetic. "Bucky?"

The soldier held a gun relaxed at his side, but could not remember either retrieving the weapon from the jumble of Koschei's possessions or changing positions. He didn't want to. It was the way he was made. "Stand down," he said, his voice sounding far away. Koschei was dead? Koschei was dead. There was something he had to do, some procedure built into him, if Koschei was killed, if he —

"We're the only ones still standing," said Steve. "The only ones left. The way it's always been, you and me. No more guns."

He wanted to stop. A few days earlier, Steve had lunged at him, terrified of the truth, while in his own fear he had hurt Steve, forced him to the ground. Koschei's power had taken hold of him, then, and there in the tent tried to do so again, but he remembered… He had lain on an operating table, in the snow, next to Steve in bed; he had run over the peninsula, through French forests, down Brooklyn back-alleys; he had sat next to Steve, fireside, their first night out of Krossberg, waiting to the point of collapse until they were at last alone to say, _Wish we could get married._ What a ridiculous request. He wanted that life. He dropped the gun as though it burned him. "No more," he said.

Steve said, "I know you and you know me." He stepped forward. “He thought he could take you away, make you into whatever he wanted… He was wrong.” He took the soldier's hand and pulled him away from Koschei, out of the tent, and into the sun.

**Sam  
** **1 July 1988**  
**Drift Point on the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula**  
**Northwest Territories, Canada**

When Captain America set him free, Sam stood a moment outside his tent, shaking with adrenaline, then ran flat-out as he'd been to told to, feet slipping in the sand and stones, until the camp disappeared from sight and he found himself in a wide field spread with white dandelions. For a single heartbeat, he feared he'd gone the wrong way, that he was alone, but then he heard his name, turned, and burst into a final sprint toward his mother's arms. Squashed between his parents, he had little attention to give to his surroundings, but when he at last looked up, he found Natalia standing nearby.

"What are you doing here?" he said.

"The soldier came back," said Natalia, as if that explained everything. Her cap, scarf, and posture were straight, but she fidgeted with the ends of her sleeves. She was nervous.

"You know this girl, Sam?" said Paul. "She hasn't said a word to us. Is she another — " He bent to one knee to address her at eye-level. "Are you a captive too, honey?"

The tension disappeared from Natalia’s face as she gave a burst of laughter. “Oh, Sam,” she said. “Americans!”

Sam rolled his eyes.

"All clear," boomed a man's voice from behind them.

Sam jumped and turned, and the voice's owner — a dark-haired Inuvialuit man — strode toward them with a rifle slung over his shoulder. "Everybody alright up here?"

"Yes, sir," said Natalia.

"Charlie!" Darlene exclaimed. "What on earth are you doing here?"

"Just-Darlene, is that you?" Charlie laughed, a joyful noise that Darlene echoed when he ran forward to give her a hug.

"What?" Sam thought he was maybe going to pass out. In his wildest dreams he could not have imagined Captain America — apparently not dead after all — orchestrating their rescue, nor running into someone his parents knew in the middle of it. Charlie had been the one to fly them to Banks Island just a couple weeks before. Maybe his parents really did know everyone. He tried to focus.

"Finished with some sport fishers from the States," said Charlie. "So I was going to Ikahuak to meet my brother, but I found these young men." He gestured toward the camp. "The story they had to tell, hey?"

"Jesus," said Paul.

Darlene said, “Paul!”.

In the tumult and disorder that followed — Sam clinging to his parents like a limpet; Vasili and Yaraschuk and the others made captive themselves; Natalia fussing until she found the one she called the soldier, a metal-armed man like some sort of Terminator; Captain America trying to prove his identity to Paul and Darlene — it took Sam a few minutes to figure out what was… Wrong. He looked all around the campsite, but Koschei was nowhere to be found and though the morning was warm, he couldn't stop shaking.

"Oh!" Charlie's exclamation made Sam jump. “I know now — it's you!"

Paul looked back toward the campsite. "Who now?"

"Him," said Charlie, pointing at Cap. He began to hum a tune it took Sam only a moment to recognize: the martial beat of _Star-Spangled Man_.

Cap turned beet-red and the Terminator covered his mouth like he was smothering a laugh.

"The Americans used to play that," said Charlie. "I haven't heard it in years, but it's been in my head since I met you." He laughed. "Now I know why."

While the adults carried on, Sam's thoughts returned to Koschei. The man could not have escaped, or everyone would be panicking, not laughing, which meant he had to be… Dead. Sam didn't want to see it, didn't want to think about it. He dragged his thoughts away from that horror and toward the soothing sound of his father's voice.

"I was furious with myself," said Paul. "I felt like such a fool, not carrying my emergency transmitter, or even my kit. I usually take it everywhere — a prototype I built myself to transmit a person’s SOS and coordinates. Still had some bugs to work out, but — "

"But I," Sam began, but found himself shushed by his father. "Dad, listen, I — " He was shushed again. He changed tactics. "MOM." Everybody stopped to look at him, and suddenly sheepish, he said, "I mean, I have one too."

His mother's jaw actually dropped. "You what?"

His father looked back and forth between them. "You what?"

"You said I had to carry it all the time, or else you'd ground me until I was old enough to vote," said Sam, "I tied it to a bird with a PIT tag, though, but I don't know if it'll get picked up or how long we can wait to find out."

"That was your tag?" said Charlie.

"Your tag?" said Cap. "That was your tag? Buck, it was his tag — We got your SOS, Sam."

Sam goggled while Cap somehow managed to carry on like this was normal, saying,  "Anyhow, Charlie, my friend and I —"

"And the girl," said the Terminator.

"And the girl. We were never here, okay? With your help, after you picked up Sam's signal, Paul and Darlene escaped, overcame their kidnappers, and rescued their son."

"But Cap," Paul protested. "What are you going to do? And where did you come from? We always suspected the Valkyrie had crashed in the Arctic, but the very fact of your survival, it's a medical miracle, and SHIELD could really use a man like you."

Cap said, "No. No buts, no SSR, and no SHIELD. You did this all on your lonesome, got it? Because I'm nothing special. That's what you've got to understand."

"We understand," said Charlie, and Darlene gave Paul a look that said the Wilsons did too.

"But what about him?" Darlene jerked her head toward the Terminator. "We're supposed to believe he's defecting? After what he did?" She gripped Sam's shoulders.

"He's with me," said Cap. "End of discussion. Now, can one of you get that plane going? All I know is you don't want me doing it. Bad history with aircraft."

The Terminator actually snorted, and Sam narrowed his eyes, studying his face. It was familiar, the mouth — like someone in his trading cards…

Paul sighed. "Well, you could fly it, couldn't you, Charlie."

"Float plane?" said Charlie. "Yeah, no problem. Should have enough fuel, since I'd guess they didn't mean to leave it there. You got a way out of here, though?"

"Don't worry about us," said the Terminator.

Sam pointed at the trussed men across the campsite. Yaraschuk was there, no longer either smug or terrifying. "What about the others?"

"We do need them," said Paul. "To prove we weren't defecting. I don't know what Bohdan told SHIELD."

Natalia touched the Terminator's arm, though she pulled her hand back when he looked down at her. "But they know you were here, soldier," she said, blushing — Sam goggled again; was she shy? — "and they'll say anything to save themselves."

"We can't kill them," said Darlene, aghast and putting her hands over Sam's ears. Sam squirmed out of reach, irritated.

"We won't," said the Terminator, "and they won't." He crouched to rummage through the pile of gear the adults had pulled from Koschei's tent and turned a blue-sparking baton in his hand. "I'll do it."

Cap stepped forward to take him by the elbow. "Buck, you don't have to."

Sam remembered the young man who had crouched outside his tent and let the tern escape, helping Charlie and the others to find them. "Not Vasili," he blurted. "Not him. He doesn't deserve it."

The Terminator looked down at Sam. Heavy shadows lined his eyes. "It's not about deserving it, kid. Nobody deserves this."

"But he helped me," said Sam, and explained what had happened, what Vasili had asked for.

The Terminator sighed. "It's only a few of their memories, kid," he said. "They'll still be your proof and Vasili will be… It won't hurt them." But he added as he walked away, almost too quietly for Sam to make out, "Not really."

Cap looked like he wanted to interrupt again, but he held his peace and Sam thought, _wait — 'Buck?'_ But it couldn't be James Barnes… In deep cover, maybe? And… magically ageless? It couldn't be, though. There were limits to how upside-down the world could turn in one day.

Natalia laughed and clapped her hands. "A defector! Koschei would be furious." She said something to the Terminator, who had already returned with the baton in pieces in his hand, in a language that Sam didn't understand. Sam thought of Koschei, Vasili, guns and blood and bones and death and weapons out of science fiction, and though he suppressed the scream boiling in his throat, he bolted, sprinting with no direction in mind until he tripped over a stone and fell face-first into the sand. When he sat up, snivelling embarrassedly, with a gash across his cheek and a bloody nose, he wanted to be at home, really at home: back in New York in his own bed in his own house in his own country. Terrible, shameful tears filled his eyes and he glared at the ground until he felt someone sit beside him.

"It's not the end," said Natalia. She handed him a handkerchief.

Sam sniffled.

"I'll see you again. And here come your parents. See, I told you they'd be safe."

Paul and Darlene joined them on the ground, one on either side.

"Home?" said his father.

"Home," said his mother.

"No," said Sam thickly, forcing himself into bravery. "To Aklavik. We're not done there. We didn't say goodbye."

"We'll help," said Natalia.

Sam wiped his nose and together they readied the plane and waited for the tide. Captain America shook his hand.

**Natalia  
** **July 1988**  
**Southbound on the Mackenzie River  
Northwest Territories, Canada**

Years later, Natalia would remember their flight from Koschei as something like a dream, seemingly endless until suddenly it was behind them, the past drifting away in the barge's wake. At the time, though, she was too stunned to recognize freedom once she held it, and as she leaned on the barge's rail, watching the water crest and froth, she stilled herself and tried not to faint.

***

Koschei had left more than enough supplies with which the soldier and his companion had loaded their packs, as well as her smaller one, after they saw the Americans off, with Charlie — an actual Ranger, she was given to understand — at the helm.

"We'll wait a bit before we head out," said the soldier when the plane had gone, tucking the broken baton in his pack. After using it to alter the other men's memories, he had destroyed it, refusing to give the Americans the remnants. He then tinkered with a small black box until it hummed smoothly. "They'll land in Tuk — it's closest — and we don't want to be around when they make that splash. Make sure there's no connection between us.” He patted the box. “And this ought to keep us free from prying eyes. Or machines, at least.”

They hid Koschei's boat — now their boat — under canvas weighted with stones and covered with a thin layer of sand out of the tide's reach, then trekked inland, retracing the soldier's steps of two weeks before. The soldier gave her an over-sized mosquito jacket to wear, and a full evening spent with the wreckage of an old plane ended with Steve digging out a bright shield. He clapped it to the strap over his chest with a metallic clang, laughing at the bright sound.

"Isn't it the Fourth of July today?" said the soldier, humming that song again.

*

About a week after their escape, when Natalia had begun to stop looking over her shoulder, the soldier held out her supper ration — supplemented with wild hare — and said, "There's no need to hurry, you know. We have nowhere to be."

"I can go faster, soldier, I know I can.”

"Natalia," he said, "I know it's hard to understand, but we aren't on a mission. There's no need to go fast."

She blinked.

"Do you remember your family?"

She recoiled from the question. The rules of the Red Room were absolute: there was no life before the program.

With unbelievable, unbearable gentleness he said, "You won't be in trouble, I promise."

She should not have believed him, but she did, and said quietly, "Yes." It was hardly a memory: a fragment of song and a scent she couldn't name. Still, she held onto it.

"I was someone before Koschei," said the soldier. "So were you. Eat up, now."

*

During their travels — when Steve called their journey "purgatory," a word she didn't know, the soldier had actually laughed — she noticed that the soldier liked to tease his companion about food. She had enough sense, though, enough training, to see that it was not mockery, but caring urgency, longstanding concern for the man's wellbeing hidden behind manly bravado. That such emotions could exist in the soldier at all surprised her, despite her private, long-held belief that it could be so. For her own part, there were sisters she had cared for — she missed Yana and Irina for their familiarity, for instance — but she had never seen such intensity of feeling as between the soldier and Steve. She watched them clasp hands, or sit close to one another over breakfast, or laugh together, and she wanted, desperately, such a thing for herself when she was grown.

"Soldier," she said, on an afternoon when Steve had run ahead to climb a small hill and spend some time sketching, "was he part of your life before Koschei?"

“Yes, he was," said the soldier.

Another morning, she picked a bit of grey fluff from where it had caught on a bush and ran to the soldier. "What's this?" He never minded if her questions were foolish.

"From an animal, I'd guess," he said. He took it in his metal hand and examined it carefully. "If they itch in the summer, or drag their bellies against the plants, it will catch, see? Smell it — musk-oxen, I'd say."

The fur was the softest thing Natalia had ever touched. She took it from his palm and put it in her pocket, then ran ahead, frightening some lean animal from its den on the banks of a hill. "Not hill. Hydrolacca… Lacco…” she said to herself. “No, pingo.” Then, "Soldier, what is that creature?"

*

Two weeks after their escape, Natalia witnessed an incredible sight: hundreds of animals like horses with horns, all milling about. It was there they met the first people they'd seen on their journey, two strangers sitting by a low fire.

"I'll speak with them," said the soldier. "Stay behind me, Natalia."

When they approached, one of the strangers called out a greeting.

"Hello," said the soldier. "Are these a herd? Your animals?"

The strangers laughed. "A herd, yes," the woman said. "Ours, no." To Natalia's ears she had a light accent, one that sounded… Finnish?

"What are they?" asked Steve.

"Never seen reindeer before?"

He shook his head.

The woman leaned over to whisper to the man, who said, "It's not our herd, but we keep watch when we're on the land. My wife is Saami, but I was born here. Well, near here — down near Paulatuk. You’re Rangers?" He eyed Natalia suspiciously.

"We know most of the patrol group around here," said the woman.

"Up from the south," said the soldier. He nodded toward Natalia, who straightened her red neck scarf and her posture. "Cadet training. Spent a bit of time with Charlie; now we're on our own. We'll be gone from here before long."

The man relaxed fractionally at the mention of the Ranger proper and offered them coffee from a metal percolator hung over the fire. "Everybody coming and going," he said. "But time enough to stay a bit, yeah?"

When Sam had talked about his parents Natalia had been envious, as she had when catching the soldier and Steve in their gentle moments, and she was envious now — of the man's certainty and sense of place. She knew from her training and from eavesdropping on Koschei's lectures to the soldier that life in this region was difficult, that the Westerners who held power maintained it through cruelty — <how else?> Koschei had said — but in that moment, she clamoured for any kind of certainty. Something to strive for. She found herself reaching for the security of the soldier's hand — like a little girl! — but caught herself. After coffee, the two groups parted ways.

*

When they had gained some distance on the pair, Steve asked her if she had seen reindeer before.

She shook her head.

"Me neither," said Steve. "Until today. But we had a story about reindeer when I was kid. A poem. Want to hear it?"

She did, but didn't want to say. She looked at her feet.

"I'll tell you," said Steve, "and he'll help if I forget any lines, won't you, Buck?"

The soldier nodded, though he was not really listening. Natalia was pleased that he trusted her enough to relax his guard.

"'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house,'" said Steve, "'not a creature was stirring…'"

*

The soldier led them back to the coast after that, and after retrieving and tuning their boat, they rode southwest on the water. Natalia wondered if Sam would have been bored by their journey; it passed quickly for her, tracking the wheeling seabirds and the cresting blue water. She would have liked to tell him about what she had seen. By the time they reached town, though — Tuktoyaktuk, the soldier said — Natalia had forgotten to be brave. From her training, she knew the town was small, but everything seemed gigantic, loud, too much. She stuck to the soldier's heels and kept her head down.

"We're quite unusual," said Steve, who had concealed his shield, but used his own body to stand between Natalia and the road. She was grateful for it, but could not find the words to say so. "I imagine it's not every day people like us turn up."

The summer barge had recently arrived in town, and after selling their own boat, the soldier arranged its captain's protection, paying him a portion of their funds as well as pledging both his and Steve's labour. He had left his Ranger trappings on the shore at Drift Point and cast the three of them instead as southerners, amateur prospectors who had spent a few summer weeks exploring the peninsula and were now making their way home. _Of course we brought our sister_ , he'd said, when pressed. _What, we were gonna leave her at a home and have her miss the adventure of a lifetime?_ "They're used to southerners with strange ideas, I'd expect," he said, with dry self-reproach, as they boarded the barge.

"You can say that again," said the barge captain, materializing behind them. "And didn't you hear? Rangers caught a pack of Russians right up on the peninsula. My cousin Charlie brought them in."

"No way," said the soldier, eyes wide. "You hear about that kind of thing, but you never think it could actually happen."

Natalia turned her face into Steve's side in feigned shyness to hide her reaction, though she stifled her impulse toward giggles with the thought of the brave man who had helped them with no guarantees.

"I have to tell you," said the captain, "you wouldn't believe half the things that go on around here."

***

And then the dream had ended. Natalia stared over the rail, watching the harbour fade from sight.

"I'm told," said Steve, standing beside her, "that the Mackenzie River is one of the longest in the world."

Battling her lightheadedness — at least in a submarine you could pretend the water wasn't there — Natalia was slow to realize that the soldier stood on her other side and had asked her a question: was she frightened? She shook her head briskly.

"Oh, too bad," said the soldier. "I thought we could be frightened together."

"Maybe," she said. "Maybe I could help you."

"Thank goodness," said the soldier.

**Steve  
** **1 August 1988**  
**Lloydminster, Saskatchewan, Canada**

They stopped at a roadside motel, the sky dark and rain pelting their car. Bucky handed Natalia a pamphlet and told her to learn three interesting things about the town where they'd stopped, squeezed Steve's hand, then went inside to arrange their rooms.

"One," said Natalia. "Lloydminster used to be part of the Northwest Territories — that's where we started, Steve — but now holds status in two provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan."

"Oh?" said Steve, distracted, watching Bucky through the picture window of the motel's front office. When they left the barge in Hay River, 773 kilometres — "as the crow flies," the captain had said — from where they began, they were at last connected to the rest of the national highway and rail networks. They had then stowed aboard a freight car to travel by rail to Edmonton, the first city large enough for Bucky to steal — "borrow," Steve had insisted — a car without immediately arousing suspicion. Bucky had stored the blocker in the trunk, “just in case,” and taken him and an equally stunned Natalia to, he still sometimes forgot what Bucky had called it, a mall, for new clothes and shoes. There, the future caught up with him all at once: shell shock. From then on, they kept themselves to themselves, staying in out-of-the-way places and lying low. It wasn't only for safety; the out-of-the-way places felt the closest to the ones Steve had left behind, while the quiet soothed Bucky and the child.

Said child continued unperturbed. "Two, it was founded as a 'utopian temperance settlement.' Steve, what does that mean?"

Steve rolled his eyes. "Means they didn't let alcohol in. Bet it worked out well for them."

Natalia gravitated toward the soldier, but had slowly begun to open up with Steve as well, at least enough to laugh around him. "I know that," she said, giggling. "What does 'utopian' mean?"

"Oh," said Steve again. "It, um, it comes from an old book. 'Utopia' actually means 'no place,' because it's an imaginary country — something someone made up. People think it means paradise, but it doesn't — it means, well, I guess it means somewhere where people are doing their best to do something different." He thought of the Red Skull. "But that doesn't mean it's right, or good."

"Thank you," said Natalia, politely. “Third,” she said, "Lloydminster technically exists in two time zones — Oh! That's like you, Steve, and the soldier, too."

Steve sighed. "You got that right, Nat." He turned to look at her. "You can call him Bucky, you know. I mean, you don't have to, but you could."

She shook her head.

Natalia slept in a room attached to Steve and Bucky's through an inside door.

"You sure she'll be okay?" Steve was skeptical; the girl had been having nightmares.

"We'll be right here," said Bucky, " and I pity any poor slob that underestimates her. Oh, I forgot — Natalia!"

"Soldier?" Natalia poked her head around the door frame. She looked hesitantly from Bucky to Steve, then back again, then spoke in Russian. He was pretty sure it was Russian.

"Yeah, you can keep the inside door open if you want. Of course.” Bucky dug through his duffle until he came up with a small box. He opened it, then passed it to Natalia — inside was a silver bracelet. “And how's that? That's yours now, okay?"

Natalia's face shone with delight — not for the jewellery, Steve thought, but for having something of her own, and she returned to the other room.

"In the Red Room, where she lived," said Bucky, pitching his tone low, "they handcuffed the girls to their beds. I'm never —" His voice became fierce. “I’m never going to do that, but she has trouble sleeping without it. I thought the bracelet would help. She misses the others."

"Jesus," said Steve, and rubbed his forehead. "Buck, I don't know how to live in this world."

"That's okay," said Bucky, tugging his hand down. Holding on. "Neither do I." He shrugged. Kissed Steve's forehead. "Let's sleep."

They stripped to undershirts and shorts, then lay down, Bucky pulling Steve close and Steve eager to follow. He wanted to rest, but his worries plagued him. "Where are we going?" In Edmonton, Bucky had cut his hair and assumed a number of identities in rapid succession to drain a handful of bank accounts meant for Soviet sleepers based in North America. He had dismissed Steve's concerns about being found, insisting that no agent would report money they couldn't find or risk questioning a command decision to withdraw financial support, but his explanation had given Steve a new source of anxiety: the legacy of Bucky's time under Koschei's control. "Frightened people," Bucky had said, shrugging, "are easy to manipulate." At least they had money to last them a while and Bucky figured he could get them papers once they reached Toronto. But then?

"I got an idea for Natalia," said Bucky. "Someone I used to know, if we can find her. If Natalia wants it, that is." He sighed. "Or my contact does, for that matter."

"I don't really want to leave her."

"Neither do I." Bucky shifted on his side to look at Steve. Like Natalia, he had had nightmares too, fatigue lining his face. But then, Steve was no different: Bucky had simply always been better at doing what had to be done. The three of them made a fine bunch. "But until the heat's off us, I don't know what else to do."

"Where can we go, then — you and me?"

"Home," said Bucky. "We'll make a home somewhere. Steve?"

"Yeah?"

"What…" He trailed off, drifting into sleep, but rallied enough to say, ”What can you tell me about my sisters?"

**Natalia  
** **14 August 1988**  
**New Haven, Connecticut, United States**

The soldier stopped the car in a suburb, much like the many others they had passed through on their long cross-Canada drive: a clean, green labyrinth. He parked outside a tall, blue-walled house as the sun went down on a Friday afternoon, and Natalia stared wondering at the many things she had studied, but never seen: a station wagon rolling past; a bright yellow school bus, packed full; an older girl in leg-warmers and rollerblades; a golden-furred dog rolling in lush lawn. <Is this real?>

He replied in English. "Yes," he said. "It's very real."

"It's new to me too, Nat," said Steve.

She spoke in Russian again to prove that she could. <It's like we came from another planet. And I get to stay here? And you're sure Koschei won't come?> Weeks later, she didn't believe it. "Where will you go?"

<You'll like it, I promise> said the soldier. Bucky. <And Koschei is never coming back, Natalia, but it's not safe to stay with Steve and me right now. They might try looking for us. New York City's only a train-ride away when you need it though, okay?> He opened his door. "But first, wait here with Steve." He winked. "Keep on an eye on him for me?" Steve huffed in exaggerated annoyance and Natalia giggled. Bucky walked up the long driveway, past a thicket of blooming rose bushes, and adjusted his gloves and jacket to conceal his arm. He said was taking her somewhere safe. She believed him.

"You love him, Steve?" She was not entirely sure what love was, but from the American films she had watched, and from the fairy stories she and her sisters had shared, she thought she had an idea. Herself, the soldier, Marya Morevna.

Steve tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. "I do, Nat. He's my best friend and I — I do."

"You have to take care of him, if I'm not there. Will you promise?"

Steve turned, and held out his hand. "And you take of yourself, when we're not here? And if you ever need us — ever, for anything — and we’re not there, you’ll tell us?”

She shook it. "Promise."

**Bucky  
** **15 August 1988**  
**New Haven, Connecticut, United States**

A woman in her mid-sixties answered the door. Her white hair was in a tight chignon, she held a half-full wine glass in one hand, and as Bucky had expected, she had a gun on him in an instant while the glass smashed on the step. He remained motionless, placid as still water. "I have a Widow in the car," he said. "She — "

The woman spat at him. "I'll send your head to Koschei tied with red ribbon like a Young Pioneer, see if I don't."

"She's twelve years old," said Bucky, "and she needs a place to stay. Koschei is dead. I took her away. I know you have your sources. You can check anything you'd like."

"It has never served me well to believe you," said the woman.

"You know that's not entirely true," said Bucky. "And you'll notice that I don't have a gun." He shrugged. "If I wanted yours, I'd have taken it."

"As though you needed one," she said.

"Please," said Bucky, all brashness dispensed with. He half-remembered the woman's face from years before. Koschei had despised her and railed against her endlessly, inadvertently cementing her in Bucky's mind. He had even helped her, once or twice. In their other lives." She needs someone who knows it can be done. I know you would have taken them with you, if you could have."

The woman sighed. "You don't know anything. Show me your eyes."

Bucky held her gaze.

She lowered her weapon. "So you got free, James, you old bastard? Good for you." She pinched his cheek like she would have an infant; no one else would have dared. "I assume you haven't been followed?"

Bucky didn't dignify that with a response, but waved to call Steve and Natalia from the car.

"If you're double-crossing me, or if you lead them to me, you'll regret it. And don't think this absolves you of responsibility for her."

"Am I a professional, or aren't I?" He permitted himself a small smile. "I'm not abandoning her, Yulia, but if someone comes for me, I want her safe. Plus I brought you a gift — should keep spies out of your hair. Or at least play merry hell with their equipment." 

"Don't call me that. And how did you find me?"

He shrugged. "I'm the Winter Soldier."

When Steve led Natalia up the drive, he reached out to ruffle her hair, an unconscious gesture that surprised him. He still could not picture his sisters' faces. "Heya, Natalia Romanova," he said, swallowing his discomfort. "This is Dorothy, but if she likes you, you can call her Dottie."

Natalia nodded. Her eyes were wide; no matter how hard Koschei tried to suppress them, tales persisted of the infamous Dottie Underwood, escapee Black Widow, defective, defector. Free agent.

Dottie nodded in return. " _Sestrichka_." Little sister.

"And Dottie," said Bucky, with Steve's hand warm in his. "This is Steve."

**The End**

**Author's Note:**

> While the character of Charlie is not based on anyone in particular, it is worth noting that the first Aboriginal person to hold a pilot's licence in Canada's north was Fred Carmichael, since named to Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame. Mr. Carmichael earned his licence in 1955 and also helped to train Cecil Hansen, the first Inuvialuit commercial pilot.


End file.
